


The Light of Stars

by firstordershitposting (ald0us)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Ace writer tho, Alternate Universe - College/University, Asexual Character, Asexuality Spectrum, M/M, Queer Themes, Trans Character, Written by a cis person though!!! as a pinch hitter, i want to make that very clear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7048132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ald0us/pseuds/firstordershitposting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux and Ren are both living disasters, but Hux is better at hiding it. When they meet at a campus queer space meeting, their instant dislike of each other is mutual. But fate--and Phasma--has other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light of Stars

Kylo dropped into the glaringly bright red McDonalds booth and pried open his coffee impatiently and took a huge gulp, ignoring the scorching heat tearing down his throat. The cup’s heat was welcome on his icy hands, warming his cold muscles, making them pliable again. He could feel the coffee warming all the way down his throat and eventually fostering a hazy warm glow in his chest. The caffeine rush would kick in soon, returning his soggy, sleet-soaked mind to normal human operating speed.

He hated McDonalds coffee. He hated McDonalds. He hated the way the dirt was atomized into the tiled floors’ grout, how the hard booths dug into his back and the tiny tables were barely high enough to accommodate his legs. He hated the way he took the cornermost booth facing the exits and had learned to press his back against it and glare murder at anyone who came near. The best way to sleep in one of them with nothing but a backpack and a jacket not suited for winter.

He hated McDonalds because it felt like home. They were all the same, all over the state, probably all over the country. Just the right side of dirty, usually deserted past a certain time, the kind of people who visited them varying widely by the time of day. The smell of fries, the always-empty ketchup dispenser, the tiredly polite employees who would probably subconsciously hate the chain’s cheery red, yellow, and whites for the rest of their lives.

Kylo finished his coffee and crushed the empty cup vindictively in his hand. The last few drops of coffee slipped out and into his woolen fingerless glove. He found the trash can, aimed, and tossed it. It bounced off the rim and onto the floor.

Scowling, Kylo pushed himself out of the booth—banging his knees against the table and jostling the furniture to hell—and stooped to pick up the fallen cup.

“Ren.”

He turned, slamming his hip into the trash can. He swore, clutching at his hip—he’d caught it right on the edge of the can, and it hurt. The crushed cup tumbled out of his grip.

“ _Damn_ it,” he bit out, hot anger flaring in his chest.

Phasma picked up the fallen cup and tossed it easily into the can, then returned her arms to cross over her chest, one eyebrow raised.

“What are you doing here?” Kylo demanded, frowning at his own bad fortune. Why did she have to encounter him when he was hobbling against a trash can, probably looking pathetic as hell? He swore she had a knack for it.

Phasma held up her phone, an android that was built like a tank. “Your parents called. You haven’t come home in days.”

“I’ve been crashing with friends,” Kylo muttered, standing up only to fold himself back into the booth. Phasma followed suit, equally cramped. They made a fine pair, their legs awkwardly jutting out from the too-small space. “I’m fine.”

“They’re only a text away,” Phasma reminded him, taking a pull from her smoothie. Kylo couldn’t fathom how she was drinking a smoothie in the winter. “A simple ‘I’m alive’ would suffice.”

“Yeah, well that’s just it, isn’t it?” Kylo snapped. “Tell them I’m alive, they want to know where, with who, when I’m coming back, how I’m doing, whether I’ve eaten, should they wait up for dinner? or should they save me some in a Tupperware? or maybe leave it in my room, which is getting so messy these days, one of them could clean it up for me if I just asked? there are _rules_ in this house, young man, we’re _family,_ and family _shares,_ we don’t mean to pry but we just need to plan _our_ future too, and the _family’s_ future, with a nice statistically average girl and 2.5 kids and a white picket fence and _grandchildren_ —“

Phasma snorted. “Han Solo and Leia Organa, the most statistically average couple you’ll meet.”

Han Solo, an American from a small town in Florida, had spent most of the cold war smuggling western amenities into countries on lockdown—and smuggling the desperate out. This business fell apart sometimes around the 90s, however, and from thereafter he’d dealt mostly in more piddly contraband like Cuban cigars and duty free alcohol. Leia Organa, born and raised in Toronto, was widely considered the matriarch of the Canadian Green Party, and had tirelessly and outspokenly campaigned on behalf of non-violence, social justice, and ecological thinking, nurturing the movement from its grassroots origins to the completely insignificant political force it was today. In the 90s she’d spent much of her time championing the Canadian Peace Alliance and the voice of women. For obvious reasons, neither of them had really been present for his childhood.

And, Kylo thought bitterly, true to Baby Boomer form they were presently ‘settling down’ in their middle age and badgering their kids for grandchildren to dangle on their knee.

“It’s hypocritical,” he grumbled. “It’s my fourth year—I survived all three years of university without them, I’m about to graduate, I don’t need them babying me. I’m doing fine on my own.”

Phasma grimaced. “You...uh, call this—“ she gestured to Kylo’s general vicinity, “—doing fine?”

Kylo scowled. “Yeah. Don’t you?”

“It’s negative 25 outside.” Phasma stated. “You’re wearing no coat but a hoodie—a tragic souvenir of your Motionless in White phase, no less—and somehow ended up at a McDonalds at 3am on a Tuesday almost two kilometers off campus with no hope of getting back to Han and Leia’s in the middle of a snowstorm. Is this sounding like the actions of a ‘doing fine’ person to you?”

“I can walk,” Kylo muttered, smarting a little from the Motionless in White comment. That phase hadn’t exactly...ended. Besides, he’d liked them _before_ they got popular. “And maybe I’m not cold.”

Phasma raised a pale eyebrow. “ Your lips are blue.”

Kylo glared at her and pretended to look out the window. It was pitch black. All he could see was his own reflection—she was right, his lips didn’t look good—and McDonalds mirrored back at him.

“Look, Ren,” Phasma said. “I’ll drive you back, I’ll even sweet-talk Han and Leia for you if you want. But you’re coming to the meetings for the next _month._ On pain of death.”

Pain of death, in this case, included the wrath of Phasma and the entire basketball team, and was not an idle threat.

Kylo weighed is options. On the one hand, he could brave the 3 kilometer walk back to Han and Leia’s, possibly risking life and limb to frostbite. On the other, he could agree to go to Phasma’s GSA...thing (for a month!), but also stay toasty warm in her aged and cramped (but very warm) Toyota Hilux Surf pickup. He was sure the club was very helpful for other people, given that she was in charge. It just wasn’t a thing for him.

Phasma checked her phone with an aggressively nonchalant flourish. “Mm, looks like it’s down to negative thirty-two. Too bad you won’t be coming with me, I’ve got a blanket in the passenger seat—“

“Fine,” Kylo grumbled, grabbing his backpack—still wet with dissolved snow and hauling it into his lap. The straps and pins clacked loudly on the table.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Phasma said, cupping a hand to her ear. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

“I won’t say it twice,” Kylo muttered, and Phasma grinned widely. She grabbed the back of his hoodie as he stumbled up from the booth and pulled him into a bone-crushing hug.

“Ow,” Kylo said. “Ow. _Ow._ Phasma. _Ow._ ” He felt duck-footed and embarrassed, his own elbows sticking painfully into his ribs. “You can let go now.”

She did, slapping him hard on the back. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s get in the truck. I left her running, she should still be warm.”

 

 

 

 

Kylo shivered into Phasma’s car blanket, fishing out the jar of peanut butter he knew she kept behind the passenger seat and twisting it open. There was a spoon inside; he picked it up and—

“Lick that spoon and I’ll murder you, Ren,” Phasma interjected, never taking her eyes off the road.

“I’m hungry,” Kylo whined, trying to devise another way to get peanut butter out of a jar. His eyes lighted on an empty plastic waterbottle on the floor, dimly illuminated by the headlights of passing cars, and twisted off the cap and used it to scoop peanut butter into his mouth. It was salty and reminded him of childhood, of buying knockoff peanut butter and loaves of off-brand wonderbread from dollar stores and assembling them in empty parking lots.

“So where were you, anyway?” Phasma asked. Kylo could hear the strained nonchalance in her voice, and didn’t resent it as much as he thought he would.

“Out. Stuff,” he said, unable to give a better answer. “Avoiding assignments. You know.”

“I don’t, actually,” Phasma returned tartly. “Unlike some, I’ve got practices to go to. And I can’t just waltz through my programme without lifting a finger. Honestly, Ren, have you turned up to one lab legitimately sober?”

Kylo thought about it. “Yeah. Once. It was awful.” He licked peanut butter off his fingers. “This is good. What brand is it?”

“Kraft Smooth,” Phasma returned, tapping her fingers in the wheel in time to whatever was on the radio. “You’re not answering my question.”

Kylo sighed. “I...I don’t know. Wandering around. Trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life. What I’m going to do after graduation. There’s not a lot of work for a biology major without grad school, and fuck that horror show.”

He wasn’t sure exactly what horror show he was referring to, but somehow the indignity of going to grad school far outweighed that of going to university.

“Well, next time, go see your advisor instead of wandering around in a snowstorm,” Phasma told him dryly.

“Don’t you start.”

“I _will_ start and will keep going as long as you’re being an infant,” Phasma told him, then flashed him an impish grin. “Honestly, Ren, sometimes I just think you need to get laid.”

“Ahh yes,” Kylo said, grinning suddenly at the long-running joke, grateful for the distraction. “I, the ace, _definitely_ need to get laid.”

“I’m serious, though, you need a boyfriend,” she told him. “I’m sick and tired of dealing with you, I need an apprentice. Someone to teach the ways of Ren, the mystical secrets of—hey, careful, I’m driving!” The last was as Kylo socked her shoulder. He was pretty sure her shoulder hurt his hand more than he did her shoulder.

“I don’t need a boyfriend,” Kylo said, fishing his phone—an android that had been alive and kicking since before 2010—out of his pocket. “But can I have the AUX cord?”

“Absolutely not,” Phasma said.

“Why not?” Kylo whined. “Oh come on, I won’t play anything you hate.”

“That,” Phasma said, “has literally never been true.”

“C’mon,” Kylo wheedled. He’d been working on a playlist of his favorite underground musicians and had discovered one of the most unique noisecore bands in the country just last week.

“You keep it up and I’m playing Taylor Swift for the rest of the ride,” Phasma said, and Kylo said not another word more.

After a while they fell into a companionable silence, Kylo occupying himself with tweaking his playlist, Phasma keeping her eyes on the road. Occasionally they both hummed along to the oldies station she’d put on, and Kylo was uncomfortably reminded of Han belting out 70s tunes while Leia rolled her eyes and told Kylo not to become a giant ham like his father.

At last the truck slowed down as they reached the suburbs where Leia and Han lived, rolling through lines and lines of identical houses and perfect, shiny cars.

“It feels so weird,” he commented, and Phasma hummed along in agreement. Kylo had spent all his youth in smoke-smelling rentals in downtown, sometimes with not enough money to pay for electricity or heat, eating out of tin cans. It wasn’t a surprise that he’d managed to live on his own. He’d been doing it almost all his life.

The neighborhood was too nice. Too...tidy, the people to normal, idle, the drug dealers more patrician and protected by a phalanx of lawyers. It felt like falling into a fairy tale: something just felt deeply _off._

Phasma dragged him to the door and knocked sharply, holding him fast as if afraid he might bolt. Considering he’d been thinking about it, it wasn’t a paranoid move.

The door opened and Leia’s face flooded with relief. Kylo shuffled in place, studying his feet intently. “Oh thank god,” she said. “Thank you for bringing him home,” she said, to Phasma. To Kylo she said, “Dear, say thank you.”

“Thanks,” Kylo muttered.

“Don’t worry about it,” Phasma said easily. There was an awkward lilt in the conversation, which she filled with, “He was just staying at mine to finish a project, Mrs. Organa.”

“That’s kind of you,” Leia said, with a grateful smile that didn’t quite unseat the worry in her eyes. “Do come for a meal sometime. We—“ she gestured superfluously at Kylo, “owe you.”

“I’d love to,” Phasma said, and Kylo didn’t even think it was untrue. Phasma admired Leia’s advocacy for women greatly, and often told Kylo he was a fucking idiot for disagreeing with her policies in general. “I’ll see you around, Ren,” she said as she started back towards her truck. Leia’s expression flickered at the name. “Wednesday at 8. You owe me.”

“Yeah,” Kylo murmured, waving a bit weakly. He wished he was driving away with Phasma, or at least that she’d done him the courtesy of running him over.

“Wednesday at 8, huh,” Han winked, and Kylo calmed the impulse to tear at his hair like an actor in an old Greek tragedy.

“She’s gay.” he said flatly.

Leia shot Han a _don’t upset him_ glare and put a soothing hand on Kylo’s back. He flinched, she faltered slightly, he wanted to scream. “Are you hungry?”

He still was—peanut butter was never _quite_ satisfying enough—but he shook his head quickly, seeing Han’s cooking equipment out. Getting caught in the kitchen now spelled more awkward family bonding full of stilted ‘son’s and ‘my boy’ uttered a little bit too loudly. “I ate at Phasma’s.”

“Well, your father and I are going to bed,” Leia announced, and Han made a dubious face, eyes flicking to the television, where Han’s new favorite netflix drama, _Making a Murderer,_ was playing. “I mean it, you,” she teased, swatting at Han, who gave her the patented Solo scoundrel smirk. For a second a smile quirked at Kylo’s lips, accompanied by a hard tugging sensation in his chest.

He made his way up the stairs, padding up with socked feet (no shoes in the house, don’t track in mud, hang up your wet clothes, careful with the carpet and the wood floors, they’re a nightmare to clean), thinking longingly of the hours he’d spent as a kid jumping up and down on creaking staircases and all the shitty apartments that couldn’t possibly be ruined by shoes.

He pushed open the door to his room—painted white, in something he vaguely recalled to be in vogue. It contained a bed, a dresser, a desk, sparsely furnished whith his meager belongings. Leia and Han had offered a suffocating number of times to take him to Ikea and buy whatever he lacked, but he refused to the point of yelling. Furniture was commitment. Owning furniture meant home. Kylo didn’t have a home, and if he did, it certainly wasn’t in dystopian suburbia. He honestly expected _Fallout 5_ to occur at any moment.

He set his backpack down by the door and shucked off his wet socks, still shivering faintly. Phasma was right—his late-night trek hadn’t been one of his best ideas. And now she’d gotten a promise out of him that he’d go to her GSA thing. It wasn’t strictly a GSA, she was much more well-versed in the terms and had given him a long sermon once about the difference, but he didn’t particularly find himself caring overly much.

Well, as long as she didn’t expect him to say anything, that was fine with him.

Kylo pulled on a warm and dry sweater and pulled off his wet jeans and tossed them vaguely in the direction of the laundry hamper Leia had insistently supplied him, then got into bed and pulled up his rumpled bedcovers all the way up to his chin.

 

 

 

 

Phasma was waiting for him outside his last class, leaning against the building and glaring at him. “You didn’t think you were going to just leave without going to Queer Campus, did you?” she asked. Kylo briefly considered lying before she began to crack her knuckles, one by one, with impressive control.

“Of course not,” Kylo said, a Solo grin breaking on his face.

Phasma shook her head. “Cheeky bastard.” She took off with long strides towards the students union building. “All right. Two rules: don’t say anything smart and try not to act bored.”

“I’m not a complete imbecile,” Kylo protested. He might not be completely attentive to his professors—or, sometimes, at all—but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t at least be polite at Phasma’s club. She was his friend.

“Uh huh.”

“When have I ever let you down?”

Phasma made a non-committal noise and pushed him up the stairs, then opened a door and pulled him through.

“Hey captain!” one boy, a happy-looking, dark-skinned guy with short hair and almost perfectly color-coordinated light plum jeans and dark t-shirt called out to Phasma. “What’s up?”

“Keep it down, Finn,” Phasma returned fondly, taking her place at the head of the ring of chairs. Kylo awkwardly snagged a chair and folded himself into it, placing his backpack on his lap and trying to resist the urge to reach for his headphones. He recognized Finn as Phasma’s nerdy—but oddly proficient at volleyball—foster brother, two years younger than her. Kylo thought well of him, but personally wouldn’t have guessed him to be queer.

“Are we gonna order pizza again?” the boy in Finn’s lap asked. He had perfectly tanned brown skin and carefree wavy hair, and looked like he had not a worry in the world, and wore black jeans paired with a truly dreadful orange t-shirt. His messy, worn converse kicked up in the air. “Cause Navana Pizza is where it’s at.”

“Behave yourself, Poe,” the girl to his right laughed, an Asian girl with an open face and keen eyes—Kylo imagined she would be nigh unbeatable in Mario Kart. “Seriously, don’t scare away anyone, we want them to come back.”

Kylo was quite sure he was included in the ‘them.’ Glancing around the group, he tried to spot fellow outsiders. There was an aggressive-looking blonde woman with a tattoo poking from the collar of her jean jacket that could have been Phasma’s twin, a sweet-looking brown-eyed girl who Kylo recognized as Phasma’s ex and the captain of the women’s hockey team, and, across from him, a haughty-looking red-headed boy who looked like his dress shoes were worth more than a year’s worth of bus passes.

“Okay guys, up here,” Phasma barked, and the entire group snapped to attention. “Welcome to the first meeting of Queer Campus this month. We’ve got a few new faces, so let’s do name, year, pronouns, major. Poe, let’s start with you, since you’re obviously so engaged with our new recruits.”

The boy called Poe gave a guilty grin. “Right, ok, I’m Poe Dameron, I’m a fourth year Aeronautics engineer with a minor in social work, and I go by he.” He turned to his ostensible boyfriend. “Finn?”

“Hey I’m Finn, I go by he, I’m majoring in Maths with a double-minor in anthropology and French, year three.” He mirrored his boyfriend’s high-wattage smile. “Welcome to Queer Campus, I guess? It’s hands-down great, I swear.” He turned expectantly to the blonde girl next to him.

“I’m Connie. I go by they,” she—they, Kylo corrected himself—said. “I’m majoring in Materials Engineering, second year freshman.” They smiled, turning to the person beside them.

Kylo lost track of the chain at some point, trying to plan what he’d say. He always found himself saying the wrong thing during these kinds of things. “I’m Kylo,” he said, once it was his turn. His voice sounded wobbly in his throat, like he’d just started puberty. It was all so humiliating. He realized with a hot flash of panic that he’d completely forgotten what he was supposed to be saying. “I’m...I go by....he...well any pronouns...I guess I....yeah.” He paused, feeling his heart pound angrily against his ribcage. “I’m in Biology, year four.” He turned sharply to the redhead, the last person besides Phasma to speak, as if challenging him to mock him.

The redhead straightened his sweater over his dress shirt and said, “I’m Hux. I go by he. I am currently studying my first year of law.” He pronounced every syllable correctly and precisely, stressing every period and giving perfectly even pauses between his sentences.

Kylo hated it.

Poe and Finn exchanged impressed looks. Getting into the Faculty of Law was notoriously difficult. Kylo hid a scowl.

“I’m Phasma, I go by she, and I’m a fourth year Chemistry major,” Phasma finished up. “For the new people, I thought I’d go over a short brief of Queer Campus’ mission. We aim to provide support for LGBT-plus and MOGAI people—basically anyone who identifies under the ‘queer’ umbrella. What that looks like is usually up to our members, but Queer Campus was originally designed as a network to bring us together. Ideally, as a family of sorts.”

Kylo thought this sounded dubious at best, but knew that if anyone could bring people together in a cohesive whole it was Phasma. She had the energy and conviction that people naturally followed.

“Find a group of people you don’t know to converse with,” she said. “That’s what we have planned for today. Then I’ll assign groups for next week’s fundraiser for us and the local LGBT youth shelter. Nothing too big, just a bake sale. Connie said they would do the baking along with Poe...is that still true?”

Connie nodded. “I’ll message you about how much to make.”

Phasma’s ex—Kylo remembered her name was Ruth—broke in saying she could help. Kylo noticed Phasma slip a wink Ruth’s way. Kylo was surprised—was Phasma playing matchmaker? He felt like he was seeing another side of her, a more relaxed, less tense version. She felt at home, at ease, in her little group. He felt a faint pang of jealousy.

Then before he knew it Finn and Poe—seemingly one of those couples who were physically entwined at the hip—started chatting with a group of freshman Kylo had mostly ignored. Rey and—Jess, he thought her name was—were joined by Ruth and Phasma and a few others.

Which left Kylo, two timid-looking freshmen whose names Kylo couldn’t remember, and the snotty redhead.

Phasma owed him McDonalds into the next fucking _century._

“I’m—I’m Dopheld Mitaka,” one of the little freshmen squeaked, looking plainly terrified. “I—I go by he—“

“He already knows,” the other one, a blonde kid who didn’t look old enough to be in university ( _gremlins,_ kylo thought), kicking Mitaka’s foot. “You just told everyone, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” Mitaka said, looking a little pink.

Hux stood to join them, his pants perfectly trim around his slim legs and his book bag tucked neatly over one shoulder. His pale shirt sleeves were buttoned primly at the wrist. He was impossibly pale; Kylo wondered if he ever had left the library in his life. Kylo also wondered exactly how he had lacquered his hair so unnaturally perfectly into place.

“So, uh, do you have a first name?” Kylo asked, cramming his hands into his pockets and doing his best to make eye contact. and pretty much failing.

“Just Hux,” the other boy said, somehow managing to appear as if he were looking down on Kylo despite being somewhat shorter. Kylo wished he wouldn’t.

“Well, Just Hux, what’s it like in law?”  
  
Kylo knew there were moments when he acted like his mother. He knew this was one of those moments. He could also not stop himself before the words slipped out of his mouth.

One perfectly shaped, almost blonde eyebrow raised. Kylo felt decidedly immature. He blamed Leia for this one.

“Decidedly not as didactic as that,” Hux said, and Kylo thought he detected a sort of accent under his words. He couldn’t place it; almost as if Hux were hiding it. “I haven’t gotten to say ‘objection’ yet, before you ask.”

Kylo hadn’t been going to, (Han’s influence) but he kept that to himself. “Well where are you all from?” Phasma owed him _big._ Big, big, big.

“Iowa,” Mitaka volunteered shakily. Kylo thought Hux’s lips curled up slightly at that.

“Chicago,” the blonde boy said—Kylo thought his name began with a T.

“London,” Hux said breezily, as if it were the most common thing in the world. “I came to study _here_ —“ he pronounced ‘here’ in a way that uniquely suggested ‘the colonies’ “—for law.”

“So you did undergrad...?” Mitaka suggested timidly.

“At Oxford,” Hux finished flatly. Mitaka’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. Kylo got the impression that the boy was strongly suspecting Hux had hung the moon, and maybe the sun and the rest of the solar system. Hux turned neatly to Kylo. “Where are you from?”

Kylo shrugged. “All over,” he said. “Military.” The lie came easily after a lifetime of practice.

Thanisson— _that_ was his name—nodded sagely and the conversation came to a dead halt. It was only saved by Hux’s extensive—if impossibly boring—knowledge of legal issues surrounding the LGBT community.

“—and North Carolina’s passing of bill HB2, or the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, sets a disturbing precedence. Already 16 other states are considering similar measures, which would likely instigate widespread attacks against the trans community—“

Phasma sat down between the attentive freshmen and Hux. “I see you’re getting acquainted,” she said to Hux, a bemused smile on her face.

Hux nodded, scratching idly at one of his sculpted sideburns. “It’s been a nice talk.”

“Some real _talk_ ,” Kylo repeated loudly. “With real _folk_..”

Phasma shot him a quick look. “Hux, have you met Ren?”

Hux’s nose wrinkled in a perfectly smug microexpression of disgust. Kylo pushed all thoughts of punching him firmly out of mind and concentrated on keeping his expression neutral. “I have,” Hux said at last.

Kylo did his best to look friendly. _Do it for Phasma,_ he thought. “Hux was just telling us about some, uh, law stuff,” he said, rather lamely. The line had sounded much better in his head, and had definitely included a better stand in for Hux’s technobabble than “law stuff.”

“Good,” chirped Ruth over Phasma’s shoulder. “Because you, Mitaka, Thanisson and Hux are going to be at the lower campus bake sale station next week.”

Hux looked as if someone had told him he was going to handed a plate of slightly undercooked meat. “I see. Thank you, Ruth.”

“I won’t make it, I have soccer tryouts that day,” Thanisson said sadly, and Kylo envied him profoundly. Would Phasma be fooled if he called in sick? Maybe. Either way, he’d gladly accept another two weeks of Queer Campus meetings as retribution than be stuck with Hux and Mitaka for another two hours.

“That’s fine,” Phasma said, glaring at Kylo as if reading his mind. “The three of you should be just enough.”

“Great,” Kylo muttered, too quietly to be properly heard.

 

* * *

 

 

“You and Ren seemed to get along,” Phasma commented, throwing her basketball gear into the back of her truck and gesturing for Hux to get in the passenger side. He complied, pulling the rusted door open with effort and pushed some of the mess off the seat, climbing in and fastening his seatbelt.

“Ren? You mean Kylo?” Hux attempted not to sound too disparaging, cradling his bag in his lap and trying not to think about why there seemed to be peanut butter smeared across Phasma’s dashboard. “Is he a friend of yours?”

Phasma nodded. “We met around the same time you and I did. He’s a good guy. Well, sometimes. He tries.” She turned on the radio, fiddled with the dial, buckled herself in.

“Does he also not know his parents?” Hux asked.

Phasma shook her head. “He ran away when he was sixteen. He...you two have a lot in common.”

Hux wrinkled his nose, watching a small tour group of prospective students trip awkwardly down the quad without real interest. “I didn’t realize you held me in such low esteem, Phasma.”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a jackass. He could have his choice of grad schools if he actually tried.”

Hux did not find the ‘if’ very inspiring, but said nothing. “He seems like a good friend.” _Just not for me,_ he didn’t add. Kylo Ren seemed like exactly the slouchy, slothful, well-intentioned but constantly dysfunctional person he did not want to be around. Hux also doubted he himself inspired much feeling of friendship in Ren, either.

“Well, just don’t rule him out too early,” Phasma finished succinctly. Hux liked that about her; she managed to get right at the heart of what she wanted to say very quickly, and tactfully. It seemed like a natural ability. Most had to hone it for years to develop the same skill. He himself had—and he knew his professors would be all too glad to cite examples of what he had still to learn. Hux reflected that he wanted a partner like Phasma some day, when he was practicing on his own. Competent, trustworthy, succinct.

Phasma was more than that, though. She was his friend. Hux was well aware he did not have an over-abundance of those.

“You _can_ make it to the bake sale, though, right?” she asked, just a bit too lightly, attention glued innocuously to the road.

Hux narrowed his eyes at her in the rearview mirror. She met his gaze, eyes wide, blue, and artless. “Are you _match-making_ me?”

“I would never,” Phasma replied gravely, pressing a hand over her heart. “How could I ever think to end your passionate, committed, loving relationship with the Redpath Library?”

Hux knew she meant it as nothing but gentle teasing, but he couldn’t deny that it resonated with a certain truth. While love and companionship was not essential to his life, that didn’t mean he didn’t want it. Or think about it with a certain ache in his chest late at night—in the library.

Phasma mis-interpreted his silence for discomfort. “Sorry, shitty joke,” she apologized.

Hux waved the apology away. “It’s fine. You’re right, anyway.”

She sighed, clearly still feeling badly. “Just promise me you’ll get out more. Be with people. Nothing you’re uncomfortable with, of course, but just...make the effort. Hunching over your books and laptop screen all the time is bad for your posture. You’ll be in PT more than me before you know it.”

Hux chuckled. “Noted.”

“Good.”

They fell into companionable silence, punctuated only by the sounds of the road and the faint yammering of the car’s radio, turned almost all the way down. Hux felt at ease, his usually jangling nerves calming to a dull panic, almost out of mind. He found Phasma had that effect on him—something about her strong, down-to-earth personality, her firmly anchored mind. Phasma knew certainty like he never would.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said, once she’d pulled up at his flat. “I”ll be at the bake sale.”

She smiled. “Good. Thank you.”

Hux pushed the truck’s door open, wincing slightly as it groaned and creaked on its rusting hinges. “We should fix that some time,” he said. WD-40 at best, or some silicon-based lubricant should do. Or even just old-fashioned auto grease.

Phasma grimaced. “Yeah. I keep putting it off. Soon,” she promised to his remanding glare.

Hux slid out of the passenger’s seat and lifted his bag off the floor, shouldering it. “See you.”

“Text me,” Phasma said, then pulled the door shut and drove away.

Hux watched her go for a few seconds, then started up to his flat. It was somewhat messier than he remembered leaving it; he straightened cushions and books and snagged an empty bottle on the table and deposited it in the recycling on his way to his desk.

The light through the window was dying quickly. Hux felt a twinge of melancholy at the grey expanse stretching out his window. He flipped open his computer and logged in; he was immediately accosted by notifications. About forty emails in the two hours he’d been gone. Nine people had viewed his linkedin profile. About sixty unread facebook messages. About sixty skype messages—three missed calls from his mother, which would stay missed.

With a resigned exhale that was too tired to pass as a sigh, Hux sat down at his computer and dutifully opened the first email and began to read.

 

* * *

 

 

“Behave,” Phasma growled, and Kylo winced, viewing the flurry of cookie arranging with skepticism. “You’ll be at the lower campus station with Hux, Mitaka, and Unamo. You gave me your word, Ren. Don’t you dare go back on it now.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Kylo returned, snapping off what could have passed for a salute. “Operation Bake Sale is a go.”

Phasma rolled her eyes, pushing him bodily towards his bake sale compatriots with a _“I swear to god, Ren.”_

Kylo crammed his hands in his pockets and made his way to the only familiar figure in sight, who unfortunately happened to be Hux. He was wearing what could have possibly passed as casual only in the ritziest parts of downtown—pure white dress shorts and shirt, sleeves rolled up with immaculate nonchalance, perfectly tailored around his thin waist and hips. His dark sunglasses—Ray Bans, probably worth half of Kylo’s wardrobe—were perched in his perfectly styled hair.

He reminded Kylo of a story one of Han’s more colorful acquaintances had told him. The storyteller—Kylo couldn’t remember her name, assuming she’d even given one—had visited a system of caves in Bolivia as a young girl with her elementary school class. Every last one of them emerged head-to-toe covered in mud, caked in it, except one boy who’d worn all-white, and emerged spotless.

“Take these and follow Mitaka to the table. Don’t drop them,” Hux ordered in lieu of greeting, thrusting a towering plate of cookies into Kylo’s arms. “Unamo has already begun sorting them by type and dietary restriction, so follow her lead. And Thanisson will be joining us in an hour or so, so keep an eye out for him,.”

“Hello to you, too,” Kylo said, forcing his attention from Hux’s collar to the unstable cookie tower. He could only imagine the irate screams he’d be subject to if he let them fall. “I thought Thanisson couldn’t make it.”

Hux cast him a _‘don’t be an idiot’_ stare. “I convinced him to come.”

Kylo had sudden visions of Hux calling up Thanisson in the dead of night, mobster style, making the young freshman a ‘deal he couldn’t refuse.’ “Right.

“Well don’t just stand there,” Hux told him. Kylo took the hint and wandered away, aimless, searching half-heartedly for Mitaka or Unamo. Finding neither, he looked out aimlessly over lower campus. It was a beautiful day—clear, fresh, clean, the sky strong and blue and cloudless, the grass and trees rustling with shedding leaves—

“E-excuse me?”

Kylo glanced down to see the dark-haired freshman had appeared at his elbow.

“Uh, this way, sorry,” Mitaka said, gesturing towards the university’s main quad. He too was laden down with baked goods, as well as a few rolls of seran wrap tucked under his chin. “We’re a bit behind schedule, but when Thanisson shows up we’ll get back on track—“

Kylo made a noise of assent, privately wondering why everyone seemed to be treating a fundraiser with the gravity of a military operation. The number of people and the chaos of the university’s main artery at noon was overwhelming; he hunched down even lower over his cookie tower and trained his eyes on Mitaka’s dark hair bobbing deftly through the crowd.

They quickly arrived at the table, a thin red plastic tablecloth fluttering frantically in the wind, Unamo barking out orders. Mitaka set the cookies down in one deft motion and began unpacking them with terrifying efficiency. Kylo set his tower down next to Mitaka’s and stepped back, hovering just behind him as he tried to find any rhyme or reason in the organization. Ordinarily he liked pattern recognition puzzles—he enjoyed IQ tests as a kid. But this was somehow more stressful than his brutal Molec final.

Kylo knew why. The source of stress was people. Always people. Loud, noisy, busy, broadcasting a myriad of unspoken visual thoughts, emotions, cues, allowing only brief glimpses of the varied tapestries of their lives, utterly transient.

“What are you waiting around for, Ren? This sale isn’t going to arrange itself.”

Kylo stifled a groan and turned around, utterly unsurprised to see a bossy redhead standing behind him. “Maybe I’m admiring the fucking scenery,” he muttered, barely loudly enough to be heard.

To his vague surprise, one corner of Hux’s mouth tugged upwards in an expression somewhere between a smirk and a smile—bemused, Kylo thought. “Fair enough,” he said. “But admire it from a vantage _not_ blocking my path.”

Kylo stepped aside in one long stride to let him pass.

 

 

 

Two hours later, Hux had used up three bottles of sunscreen, Mitaka had almost fainted from the heat, Thanisson had come running up spouting off apologies, and Unamo staring with obvious interest at half of Phasma’s basketball team. The other half of which was busy cooing more or less covertly over Mitaka.

“He’s so _little,_ ” a blonde girl commented to her dark-haired and dark-skinned neighbor behind her hand. “I just want to boop his nose.”

“Adorable,” another whispered.

“Very cute,” agreed a boy from the men’s team, a bit pink.

“I do hope he’s bisexual,” Hux commented, glaring up at the sun as if it had personally offended him. “It’s rather a waste, otherwise.”

Kylo snorted softly in agreement. Mitaka, for his part, seemed overwhelmed but gratified at the attention, blushing furiously. Or maybe he was just pink from the sun. Hux, for his part, already looked like a baked lobster. Kylo took pity on him and shifted so that he was intercepting the sun and Hux was standing in his shadow. Hux looked up, scrutinizing him, as if trying to figure out whether the action was intentional or not. Kylo stubbornly kept his gaze glued to his shoes and offered no commentary.

By lunch, all the cookies brought to their station were sold. Hux had clearly missed a career option as either a car salesman or a mobster: the bake sale was run with the cold efficiency of a high-tier criminal organization or an industrial corporation and passers-by were either ordered, coerced, or cajoled into a purchase. Unamo looked exhausted, Mitaka on the verge of collapse, Thanisson almost grim, Hux with the cold contentment Kylo imagined of Napoleon on conquering France. Kylo, for his part, had beaten seventeen levels of candy crush.

“Good work, team,” Hux said as their group broke up, sagging gratefully into their folding chairs. Poe Dameron arrived minutes later (“Finn’s with the others,” he announced on arrival, as if the most noteworthy thing about his present state was the absence of his boyfriend) and began heaping cookie platters into his arms with reckless abandon and tossing them onto the empty chair beside him, then kicked repeatedly at the table’s stuck brace to get it to fold—

Kylo grabbed the table’s edge seconds before it tipped over and slammed onto Hux’s foot. Shocked surprise was etched cartoonishly onto Dameron’s face. He grimaced apologetically at Hux. “Shit, man, sorry—”

“For fuck’s _sake,_ ” Hux snarled, cutting him off. “Are you _completely_ fucking incompetent? We’ve managed all day without mishap and the second you come in here with your lackadaisical posturing it all goes completely to hell. Do you do this with everything? Half-ass your way through life and hope it works? Fly by the seat of your pants? If so that’ll get you absolutely fucking _nowhere_.”

Dameron stared. Blinked. “Uh,” he said.

Hux seized the table from Kylo’s grasp and wrenched it back into place with a sharp _CLANG._ Dameron glanced at Kylo in puzzlement, as if to say, “what’s with this guy?”

Hux planted his palms on the table loomed over the surface like a particularly irascible bird of prey; Poe leaned comically backwards. “ _Well_?” Hux grit out, through a set of perfectly straight and white teeth.

“Lay off him,” Kylo interjected, taking Hux’s arm and pulling him back. “It was an accident. Nothing came of it.”

Hux jerked out of Kylo’s grip with irate irritation. “Don’t get me started on _you._ You’ve done nothing but stand here like the sphinx all day, you’re hardly one to talk.”

Kylo’s temper flared like a spark to dry tinder. “No one appointed you the committee in charge of this. It’s a fucking bake sale. Get the hell over it.”

“I’m not a committee!” Hux snapped.

“Woah woah woah,” a new voice said, and Dameron’s boyfriend, Finn, stepped smartly between them, hands held up in a conciliatory gesture—and to push them apart should they make any sudden moves at each other. “Ren, don’t be an asshole. Hux, drop the control freak act. We’re not here to fight, got it?”

Kylo glowered, his ire cooling rapidly into something that smarted vaguely of embarrassment. “Yeah, got it."  
  
Hux said nothing, his flamingly red face utterly expressionless. He crossed his pale arms over his thin chest and glared.

“It’s just the sun,” Mitaka muttered nervously. “Makes everyone twitchy.” Thanisson nodded, backing him up.

“Good,” Finn said. Kylo avoided his eyes, focusing on the soft grey heather weave of his t-shirt. He worked out. Good eye for color. Shaved line in his hair, sparse eyebrows, good complexion. “Let’s go join the others.”

 

 

 

 

 

The next two weeks passed torturously slow, but without incident. He had two biochem labs, one of which he mostly skipped, and he attended lecture mercurially. Queer Campus was, to his profound surprise, one of the more engaging activities in his week. Phasma opened the floor to debate on how to spend the club’s portion of the newly-earned funds, seventy percent of the earnings having gone to an understaffed LGBT+ youth shelter.

Poe, somehow unsurprisingly, immediately suggested weekly pizza “forever.” Finn gave him a Look and suggested an outreach to kids in middle and high schools without GSA clubs. This was received well, but eventually deemed too difficult and complicated: dealing with the local school system would likely be too much headache. Hux suggested a letter campaign to the governors of states with proposed “bathroom safety” laws, and using social media to promote and raise awareness on campus. Kylo grudgingly had to admit it was an excellent suggestion, but, as the rest of the group pointed out, while a great idea for a campaign, was not going to use up much of their new funds. Ruth, Phasma’s ex, suggested a student-run hotline—staffed, Kylo assumed, entirely by themselves—and putting up flyers for it around campus and even in middle and high schools.

This idea was met with great enthusiasm and contention. The logistics unspooled with great debate over the next meeting, and it quickly became clear to Kylo that Hux was the most planning-oriented of the lot of them. And he seemed to know it, too, which made him insufferable, picking almost every point of contention as the hill to ride or die on. Kylo had seen the tactic many times before with his mother—both in politics and in her own personal life, especially where Kylo’s father was involved—and he hated it so much precisely because it was so effective. Eventually everyone realized, subconsciously or not, that giving him his way was easier.

Controlling bastard.

Despite his “authority issues” as an grade-school report card had once put it (to his mother’s great chagrin and his father’s great delight), Kylo still found himself enjoying the meetings. It was calming, sitting there and letting point and counterpoint and their good-natured jokes (and Poe’s awful puns) wash over him, enjoying the bliss of no one expecting anything from him. He said nothing, sitting vigilant in attentive silence, and no one minded. But he didn’t feel ignored, either. His silence was accepted.

It was a welcome counterpoint to the Organa-Solo family dinners, where his silence was taken as “sulking” and “reverting to teenagehood.” (“Really,” his mother said, “why won’t you lighten up? The world’s not ended yet”).

So when he finally spoke, he was surprised. So was everyone else. Even Hux shut up long enough to let him finish.

“I think we should take turns,” he said, feeling the prickle of sweat on his palms and the strained warble in his throat as he tried talk. No one told him to shut up, so he kept going. “You know. Each person has a week of duty, or however long they like. They answer the phone for that time. Then they pass it on.”

“Ren makes a good point,” Phasma said, as if it was the commonest thing in the world for Kylo to speak up, and Finn and Poe weren’t exchanging shocked and delighted “ _he actually talks?! holy shit”_ looks. “Phone duty should be subject to sign up and only as long as the volunteer likes. Taking turns could work.”

The rest of the group nodded in near-universal assent. Kylo forced himself to not totally avoid their eyes.

“As long as there’s a sign-out sheet,” Hux said, and no one argued. When Kylo got up to leave at the end of the meeting, his shirt stuck to the back of the chair with sweat.

 

 

 

 

“That’ll be six dollars thirty, or however much you can give,” the cashier informed him archly. Kylo recognized that voice. He looked up from his soup and sandwich, hoping he was wrong.

He wasn’t.

Hux lounged behind the counter, looking unimpressed as always, a pristine pale pink polo clinging to his slim torso and his hair lacquered to perfection. Seeing as Midnight Kitchen was the campus’ first student-run, pay-as-you-can cafeteria, Hux’s rich boy dress couldn’t have been more out-of-place.

Kylo must have gone silent too long, because Hux prompted him with a sharp, _“Well?”_

Kylo pulled out his wallet and selected a ten dollar bill, then poured out his pocket change into the donation jar, as was his custom. He met Hux’s eyes, a challenge. “I’ll take a receipt.”

Hux raised an eyebrow, sharp expression softening. “I’ll admit to you, Ren, I thought you were one of those assholes who comes here to get a free meal without needing it.”

Kylo knew the type. Rich kids, usually, upper middle class folk who’d been taught to take whatever they could. He may have once thought that way, he couldn’t recall, but he knew that places like this—the Midnight Kitchen, they called it—had saved his life. Literally. He figured now that he’d survived, he owed the universe one to pay back the debt.

“And I thought you were one of those assholes who only volunteers here to put it on their CV. Except you haven’t yet proved me wrong.”

For a moment, Kylo considered that this might make Hux angry. But, to his surprise, he only smiled. He had a sharp, thin-lipped smile that hinted at irony. It seemed genuine, a rarity, Kylo guessed. “Fair enough.” His pale eyes dropped to Kylo’s hand. “Is that Phillip K. Dick?”

Kylo nodded, struggling to reposition the ungainly book in his hand, which also held the cup of soup and his sandwich. “Been re-reading his stuff lately. You a fan?”

“Only recently,” Hux admitted. “I read _Do Androids Dream_ first in grade seven, thinking I was smart enough to understand anything, and came out with no clue what the man was babbling about. It wasn’t until later—two months ago, really—that I actually bothered to pick it apart.”

“He can be a handful,” Kylo agreed. “All that religious metaphor stuff. You are the old man on the hill. Reliving his death. The spider. I thought it was hysterical as a kid. The I read it again as a teen and was obsessed by the same stuff. Doesn’t stop it from being out there, though. Like Huxley if he did drugs.”

“More drugs,” Hux corrected, and Kylo gave a quiet laugh. “He was, if memory serves, rather well acquainted with LSD.”

“Comes with the territory, I guess,” Kylo said, fumbling with the soup cup. “Though most writers don’t usually try to achieve spiritual enlightenment through it. I think.”

Hux took the cup from him and moved around to the other side of the counter, carrying it over to the nearest table. With a guilty start Kylo remembered the other customers in line, then realized there were none. It was just after lunch rush hour—the caf would be deserted for a few hours.

“What I always liked about Huxley is the same thing I disliked about Orwell,” Hux said, sitting down across from Kylo and placing his soup in front of him. “His world order makes sense. Relatable, almost. Orwell has a maniacal force bent on warping reality to their purpose. Huxley’s World Controller just wants obedience and order. Through science. Economics. Psychology. The greater good. He’s a much harder philosophy to disregard—a more complicated evil, because he’s self-aware. _If_ he’s even evil at all.”

“Him making that choice is what makes him evil,” Kylo replied without hesitation, popping open his soup. “Orwell’s order is just...the will of a god.”

“Yes, but Huxley’s society could _work,_ ” Hux returned. “Orwell’s was just the USSR on steroids. Huxley’s is _new._ Don’t just take away the words, take away the idea. The ability to even hold an idea. Complete stability in all facets of life. It’s precisely horrifying because it _could_ work. Or visionary. Depends on your point of view.”

“A society like that could stand, but I’d never want to live in it.” Kylo had forgotten his soup completely. “His response to the World Controller is ultimately that. Give me freedom. I’ll take it, even if it gets me kicked in the teeth. I want pain. I want death. I want art. I want all that because I’d rather limit myself than be limited by others. I want to be free.”

Hux’s lips twisted into a bitter sort of smirk, he looked down. Kylo noticed his eyelashes were almost transparent. “Yes, freedom is rather hard-won, isn’t it?”

Kylo agreed, deeply. “Sometimes death seems easier. It _is_ easier. Maybe it’s the ultimate freedom. Who knows.”

“Probably never you or I,” Hux said, with a quiet laugh. The caf had suddenly turned somber, a cloud passed over the sun. Shadows slouched in every corner. The light felt harsh, artificial. Kylo suddenly felt very alone.

“Maybe they underestimate the power of hope,” he said. “Maybe as long as there’s still light, there’s still hope.”

Hux’s lip lifted as if he were about to mock him, then lowered as he decided against it, as if hearing the sincerity behind Kylo’s words. His gaze lowered again, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I underestimated you.”

Kylo’s brows knitted together in a frown. Before he could ask what he meant, a group of students pushed through the door, babbling like a bubbling brook. Hux gave him an apologetic grimace, pushing back his chair and standing. “Duty calls,” he said with another bemused smirk.

Kylo watched him go with a twinge of regret that was quickly replaced with the searing vulnerability of oversharing. He grabbed his soup and began shoveling it into his mouth, carefully avoiding Hux’s eyes. It had been a wanky conversation to begin with—two white guys talking about sci-fi like they invented it—but he’d _enjoyed_ it, talking to someone who’d interacted with the text the way he did. And if he was being honest, he enjoyed the connection. The freedom with which his thoughts became ideas became words. How natural Hux was to read. The advantage of talking to someone who loved to talk, he thought with a faint glow of humor.

He shoved his sandwich into his bag, climbing out of the booth with great care and effort, still banging his knees to hell and back nonetheless. He still wasn’t sure how Phasma did it without killing her knees—she was taller than he was. He picked up his empty soup bowl container and threw it away.

“To hope,” Hux said with a strange smile as he passed to push open the door. Kylo took the smile and tucked it away in memory, to remember later.

 

* * *

 

 

“Sorry, sir, your debit card doesn’t seem to have gone through. Would you like to try another card?”

Hux frowned, pulling out his card and inspecting it for scratches. He’d checked the balance just that morning—he had plenty left in checking. “Try it again,” he said, pushing the misbehaving thing into the reader again and tapping irritated through the screens.

 _Transaction failed_ flashed across the screen, and the machine beeped shrilly. Hux’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he suddenly _knew_ with a cold feeling in his stomach. He broke off eye contact with the cashier, apologized, and left swiftly, the half-annoyed and half-pitying stares of the people queued behind him burning hot on his neck. He marched to his car—a sleek white BMW he’d never wanted that still smelled of new car—and threw his bag into the passenger seat, pulling his phone from the charger and dialing the number with angry pecks at the screen keys.

“ _Hello?_ ”

“Mother,” Hux grit out, keeping his tone icy as he could manage, fighting to keep the boiling anger and residual embarrassment from melting through.

“ _Oh, honey! I’m so delighted you finally called. Your father and I have been worried absolutely sick about you! What with you never returning our calls. Honestly, honey, would it be that hard to pick up the phone once and a while and give your poor parents something to smile about?”_

Hux’s ‘poor’ parents had plenty to smile about—namely, their gaudy mansion and four-car garage, indoor pool, and their terrible, simpering friends that were just as bad as they were. In fact, he couldn’t recall the last time his presence had elicited a genuine smile out of either of them.

“You froze my account,” he said flatly. “That’s _my_ fucking money—“

“ _Language,”_ his mother interrupted in reproving tones.

Hux grit his teeth and squeezed his phone so hard the edges bit into his palm. “That account is my money and you have no right—“

“ _Oh but honey, your father and I go in and top it up, don’t we? So we have every right.”_

“I don’t _want_ your money,” Hux snarled. “That’s why I _made_ the account. I don’t even know how you even started depositing into it, it’s not even a joint account—that’s not the _point,_ the point is that my money’s in that account and you can’t—”

“ _We’re old friends with the manager. You know that. We told him how worried we were about you, sweetie, and he took pity on us—“_

 _“_ —you threatened to sack him.” Hux interrupted.

A pause. Dangerous. For a moment Hux thought he’d gone too far. His mother especially liked to have a certain veneer of civility over all the things they did in their thoughtless, careless lives. “ _Of_ course _not, honey. Don’t be silly. We just had a little word. He agreed to the transfer. It’s all completely kosher.”_

Hux rolled his eyes so far back into his skull that his eyeballs ached. “That’s illegal! And—besides, Kosher describes _food._ It’s not your word to use.”

“ _Don’t be silly,_ ” his mother repeated, and Hux genuinely could not tell if she was referring to his objection to her using words she didn’t know the meaning behind, or the law. “ _You know I don’t keep track of that stuff. And neither does your father.”_

“Yeah. Trust me. I know.” Hux thought bitterly about finding a new bank—preferably a local one, where it would be very hard for his parents to exert their very long-armed influence. A credit union, preferably. Government-funded. Less likely to cut corners based on threats from affluent stockholders.

“ _Don’t take that tone with me.”_

“I’m twenty-four,” Hux said tonelessly.

His mother paused, no doubt to shoot her cronies a “can you believe him?” look. “ _Now about that little...misunderstanding. You know we’ve been wanting to visit. So how about you take a peek at the emails I’ve been sending you, give us a date, and we’ll see what we can do about the bank?”_

Hux ground his teeth. The very thought of seeing his parents made his stomach flop like a beached fish. But hunger would do that too, and no doubt his parents had seen to it that _all_ his accounts of his own money had been frozen. “Fine.”

He could almost see his mother pout. “ _No need to sound so grateful.”_

Hux had to grip the steering wheel with his free hand to keep from throwing either his phone or a fit. He took a breath, resenting the words he was about to say. “Thank you.”  
  
” _No need to apologize, dear,”_ she replied, and he wondered if she was even fully listening to what he was saying. “ _Your father and I love you. That’s why we’ve got to do things, sometimes things we don’t like. That’s all part of being an adult.”_ A pause. “ _But enough with all that negative talk. You give a look to those dates, and once we’ve booked tickets we’ll send another transfer. How does that sound, pumpkin?_

Hux opened to his mouth to snarl where she could stuff her next transfer, then remembered the thousands of dollars in law books he’d been dreading buying for the next semester. They were always going to be like this, he told himself. Nothing would change that, least of all him. He might as well get as much as he could for his suffering.

“Fine,” he said. “And don’t call me pumpkin.” He hung up with a jab of a button.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo slammed the door shut behind him with a _BANG_ and legged it up the stairs to the room with his things, just managing to shut the door before his mother or father could spot him and attempt to make conversation. Sighing deeply, he dumped out the contents of his backpack on the neatly made bed—a sure sign that either parent, likely Leia, had been in there ‘tidying up,’ or, more likely, poking through his things. His Biochem textbook bounced and slid onto the floor with a heavy _THUMP._ Kylo kicked it into a corner and immediately regretted the move as pain flared up his leg. Hobbling and cursing, he clutched at the bruised toe, unable to help himself from feeling personally victimized.

His phone vibrated on his bed and he flopped onto the mattress, wincing as his keys dug cruelly into his back. He swiped to accept the call, recognizing Phasma’s number. “Hey.”

“ _Hey._ ”

“What’s up?” Kylo picked up the nearest object to him—a pen—and began to fiddle idly with it, flicking the well-chewed cap on and off again.

“ _Remember how I told you a month ago playoffs are tonight?”_ Phasma said, and Kylo groaned inwardly, lanced through with guilt. She _had_ told him, and he’d forgotten. “ _Well, playoffs are tonight.”_

“I’ll be there,” he promised, internally panicking. He couldn’t imagine how he was going to get to the game—he might have to ask Han or Leia for a ride. The very thought made the back of his neck prickle with indignation.

“ _You can ride with me,_ ” Phasma said, as if reading his mind. “ _I won’t even extort something from you.”_

Kylo grinned. “Nothing? Not even an oil change?”

“ _Now you mention it, an oil change would be nice. But I did it this weekend with Ruth. Next time, I’ll hold you to it.”_

Kylo tossed the pen aside and picked up his wallet, flipping through the mostly empty billfold, thumbing through business cards—lots of schwarma places, the occasional Korean barbecue. Empty Subway gift cards. “Good. When should I be ready?”

_“Now would probably be ideal, considering I’m idling in your driveway.”_

Kylo jolted to his feet with a curse, rushing to the nearest window. Indeed, Phasma’s battered old Toyota was sitting in the driveway, looking as if it might spontaneously dissolve into rust at any moment. He felt an irrational swell of love for the old thing. “That you are.”

“ _Yeah. Get your ass down here.”_ She hung up.

Kylo grabbed his wallet and keys and a book off his desk and shoved them into his pockets along with his phone, then rushed to shove his feet into his Doc Martens without lacing them up, then wrenched open his door and took the stairs at a run, grabbing his jacket and seizing the front door handle.

“Where are you going?” Leia called, a disapproving storm cloud of an expression on her face. “We were just about to have dinner—”

“Out,” Kylo tossed back over his shoulder, then slammed the door shut behind him before anyone could stop him. Within seconds he was in Phasma’s passenger seat, breathing a bit hard.

“Did you tell them when you’d be back?” Phasma asked, not moving to back out of the driveway.

“Yeah, of course,” Kylo said. “They’re fine with it.”

She wasn’t entirely convinced, but didn’t argue, coaxing the Toyota into a reverse. Its tie rod ends squealed torturously as she turned and its suspension gave a great _humph_ as she hit the dip between the driveway and the main road.

“You’ll be a bit early,” she told him, accelerating out of Han and Leia’s too-suburban neighborhood. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“It’s good,” he promised, struck by a stray thought. “By the way, do you know who actually _owns_ the jacket Dameron and Finn are always wearing? They’re both always in it.”

“You know, I’m not sure,” Phasma replied, sucking thoughtfully at the metal ring through her lip. “Finn insists it’s Poe’s, and Poe says it’s Finn’s, but Ruth thought it might actually have originally been Rey’s. Apparently she got it in Mexico when visiting your uncle.”

Kylo bit his lip at the mention of his cousin, but said nothing of it. “I didn’t realize they knew her.”

“Oh yeah, they’re actually a bit of an OT-three, if you take my meaning. Inseparable. She’s usually regular at Queer Campus, but she took the month off to visit Luke after Mara died—sorry,” she added, sensing his discomfort. “Oh god, tie your fucking shoes Ren, you’re a walking fall hazard.”

Kylo folded one long leg up onto the seat after the other and complied, grateful for the change in topic. “Give me more than thirty seconds’ warning next time, and I will,” he returned with his best Solo grin. “Enough of me. How are you feeling? Ready?”

Phasma shot him a savage grin in the mirror. “Ready to break a leg. One of _their_ legs.”

Kylo had often thought he’d never want to be on the opposite end of the court from Phasma, and things like this only confirmed that theory. She could be utterly ferocious as a matter of routine—he could scarcely imagine how fucking scary she would be over something she was so passionate about: winning.

Phasma was a winner. It was as simple as that. More and more, he felt like the opposite. As much as winning was encoded into her blood, a biological need as simple as breathing, losing was natural to his. He was, in simple facts, a loser.

Kylo shoved his self-pity aside and drummed his fingers on the sideboard of the door. The rest of the ride passed in companionable silence, the sort of silence that passed between two friends who knew each other well enough that talk wasn’t necessary. The scenery flew past, stretching out into an unmoving green infinity. Kylo reflected as the sun began to set that he felt happy.

As soon as they arrived in the already gloomy-dark parking lot, Phasma whisked away to regroup with her team. Kylo clambered out of the truck, book clutched in his hand, snagging Phasma’s peanut butter jar as he left. Skippy Smooth. He really did need to get a jar or five, it was easily the best peanut butter he’d ever tasted.

He slammed the door shut with a hollow _CLANG_ and started towards the gym, pushing past a white BMW and through the heavy doors. There were already a few people in the stands, a few milling about, the powerful smell of hot dogs and hamburgers wafting heavily in the air.

Kylo climbed up the bleachers to the top ledge, then edged towards the far corner, which was tucked against the far wall. This was where he always sat, there to read his book. He had no real understanding of basketball despite Phasma’s best efforts, but he knew she appreciated him attending nonetheless. And he liked to support her.

When he arrived in his custormary corner, it was already full.

 

* * *

 

 

“Well?” Hux demanded, snapping closed his contract law reader and fixing Kylo Ren with a gimlet glare. “Are you going to say something, or just stand there and stare at me?”

Ren’s dark eyes frowned. He shifted on his large feet. “That’s my spot.”

“I didn’t realize your name was on it,” Hux replied archly. “But you can sit next to me, as long as you’re quiet.”

“How kind of you,” Ren muttered, but folded his large frame into the bleacher seat next to him. He sat there, still for a moment, dark eyes flickering over the crowd, observing.

“Ovid,” Hux remarked, looking at the book in Ren’s hand. “For a biologist, you do an awful lot of reading.”

“As long as I’m not translating,” Ren mumbled, not really answering what Hux had said. He had a maddening habit of doing that. “I hate translating.”

“Latin’s not nearly as bad as Greek,” Hux lectured, picking up his torts text and scanning it idly. “Even Koine Greek is a disaster. Better to avoid it on the whole, if possible. But the law persists in using these dreadful languages no one speaks.”

Ren laughed quietly. “I’d have thought that would be your thing.”

“It is,” Hux admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I think everyone else should be subjected out of bloody-mindedness. Especially considering people whose first languages aren’t Latin. Do they really want to be memorizing terms that aren’t even in their second language? Doubtful.”

He realized he was rambling, and frowned, unable to recall exactly when Ren had become someone he rambled to. He barely even rambled at Phasma. He barely even allowed himself his own ramblings. “Sorry. I’ll let you alone.”

“No, I like it,” Ren said, in that impossibly deep voice of his. Hux could imagine the way it would resonate if he pressed his ear to Ren’s chest as he spoke. He didn’t quite look Hux in the eyes, but came close—Hux noticed he tended to eschew eye contact whenever possible. He sat folded in on himself, as if trying to shield himself from human contact with his own limbs.

“Well, say something every once and a while so I know you’re still awake,” Hux returned drily. “I’m afraid I won’t be much company, I’ve got lots of work to do.”

Ren frowned. “How are you going to study during a basketball game?”

Hux had to admit he had a fair point. But that hadn’t exactly stopped him in the past. Besides, he’d never admit as much. “How are you going to read Ovid during the game?”

Ren gave a shy smile. “That’s fair. I guess I won’t.” His gaze caught on the book still half in Hux’s bag. “Is that _Paradise Lost_?”

Hux nodded. “I’m reading it again before starting _Paradise Regained._ So, by all accounts, I can be disappointed. Satan’s an excellent study for oratory, however.”

The last was hardly a serious comment, but Ren seemed to take it as such. “The mind has the power to make a hell of heaven, or a heaven of hell.”

Hux fixed him with a glare. “He was referring to being forced to sit next to you.”

Ren chuckled again, a rumbling, unfairly attractive sound. “Fair enough. But is that a hell, or heaven?”

Hux opened his mouth to say _hell,_ but it didn’t quite ring true. “I’ll let you know when I decide.”

“I await your decision with bated breath.”

Now it was Hux’s turn to chuckle. He looked down pointedly at his torts book, forcing himself to concentrate, parsing every inky-black word. Ren left him in blessed silence for a few moments, cracking his own book and leafing idly through the pages. Either he was a very rapid reader, or he was skimming, Hux couldn’t tell. On the court, he caught sight of Phasma’s shockingly blonde hair and smiled.

“She’s matchmaking us, you know,” Ren volunteered suddenly. He sounded grim, grave, as if informing Hux he had but weeks to live.

“I’m aware,” Hux laughed. “I’m not sure where she got this delusion.”

Ren looked askance at him. “Are you...are you not into guys?”

Hux snorted. “I _am._ But not you. You’re not interested in _me,_ are you?”

“Absolutely not,” Ren replied immediately, without hesitation, turning away. Hux noticed his ears were rather pink.

“Good,” Hux said. He returned to his book. It could have been written in Chinese and he’d have had better luck with it.

“Are you sure?” Ren asked suddenly, gaze very carefully glued to his book. “Not even a little bit?”

“Not even a little bit,” Hux assured him swiftly.

“Good,” Ren replied.

They sat there for a few moments, the sounds of the game building around them as people shuffled in. The smell of popcorn was overpowering; Hux recalled he hadn’t eaten since the morning. He noticed Ren smelled good—sweet, but musky. With a prickle of consternation, he recognized the smell of Old Spice. Only someone as impossible as Kylo Ren could manage to smell good with _Old Spice._

“Maybe she’s got a point, though,” Ren volunteered suddenly. “Maybe we deserve each other. To atone for crimes in our past lives.”

Hux peered at him through narrowed eyes. “Are you high?”

Ren considered. “Pretty sure not.”

 

 

 

Minutes later they were standing outside in the cold, rubbing their hands together for warmth, passing the rolled material back and forth. Ren reached for his hand as he took a drag; Hux slapped his hand away and kept smoking, then passed it back and lit up a cigarette.

Ren looked at him with big, wary eyes. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

Hux gave him a hard look, then glanced to the roll in his hand. “No of _course_ not. Don’t be an idiot, Ren.”

“I’m serious,” he pressed on, his low rumble earnest, leaning back against the gymnasium housing. Hux was tall, but Ren somehow managed to make him feel slight. “Tobacco kills.”

“So does stress,” Hux replied, flicking away the ash with disinterest. “Smoking and stress. My two favorite activities.” He checked his watch. “The game will be starting any minute now.”

“I might stay here,” Ren said, a bit bashfully. To Hux’s questioning gaze he said, “I don’t really get basketball. Phasma’s tried to explain it, but to be honest, I don’t think I really care. She’s the reason I go.”

Hux smiled, looking thoughtfully up at the canned light above. Moths fluttered slowly about it like ghosts. “Same here.”

A muted roar broke the stretched-out silence, signaling the start of the game, a shrill whistle. The very thought of the noise, the rowdy crowd, the utter smell, gave Hux a low, throbbing headache. He’d much rather be here, out in the cold, the dark, getting high with Kylo fucking Ren of all people. He gave a soft laugh, thinking of what his father would say were he here to witness it.

That was just it. His father wasn’t there. Hux would make sure he never witnessed such a thing. He’d play the perfect son, even if it killed him. He took another drag on his cigarette.

“Fuck, it’s cold,” Ren said, shuffling his large feet and stuffing his equally large hands in his pockets.

“We can wait in my car,” Hux suggested. “It’s warm.” _And dark. And cozy._ Away from the mass of people, the reminder of loneliness. With just himself and Ren, he felt less lonely than in a crowd.

“Sure,” Ren replied, picking up Hux’s bag for him and following him into the parking lot. The cars, many and varied, gleamed in the untidy rows. Hux unlocked his car, threw his armful of books in the back seat with uncharacteristic recklessness, and sat in the driver’s seat.

He tossed Ren a look. “Well?”

Ren followed suit, opening the door and folding his large frame into the tiny space, tucking in his shoulders even more than usual. “You’re better off turning on the engine. Won’t drain the battery,” he said as Hux reached for the heat.

Hux fixed him with a glare. “I _know,_ Ren. I do have a degree in engineering.”

Ren frowned, the soft glow of the car’s panel lighting his uneven features with great contrast. “I thought you were in law.”

Hux waved a hand, the high making him relaxed, less inhibited. “I just happened to win that particular roulette. Doctor, lawyer, engineer. Guess which one I landed on. Didn’t pass Go, either.”  
  
Ren’s frown deepened, but he said nothing. The tachometer lights were bright orange pinpricks in his impossibly dark eyes. “Well, it looks like you did collect the two-hundred bucks,” he said with a slight upward curve of his lips.

“Lucky me,” Hux replied, rolling down the window to puff out another breath of smoke. In one deft movement, Ren flicked the remainder of the cigarette from his fingers and out the window. Too surprised to be angry, Hux said, “Are you trying to start a fire?”

Ren grinned with artfully crooked teeth. “Starting fires is my specialty.”

“Figures.” Hux stabbed the button to roll up the window and glared. “Well, don’t do it around me.”

A moment of silence that seemed to stretch on into infinity. Hux felt as if he were floating, carried along by an invisible current. His fingers tingled from the welcome heat. He wasn’t sure how long he sat that way, unusually comfortable. Occasionally Ren sniffled or shifted, and Hux was surprised to note that he didn’t mind the interruption. Then, “Can I have the AUX cord?”

“No.”

“Why _not_?” Ren whined, somewhere between put out and deeply outraged.

“I can’t trust you. You’re wearing a Marilyn Manson shirt.” Hux sighed, his relaxation shattered. “Honestly, Ren, did you just not outgrow the 90s?”

“There’s nothing wrong with Marilyn Manson,” Ren argued, firing up at once. “He’s far more articulate than anyone gives him credit for. Try giving him a listen—actually listening. To the lyrics. Some of them are quite good.”

Hux rolled his eyes. “The fact that we’re having this conversation is the problem, Ren. It’s nostalgia for a bygone era. Teenage rebellion. Nothing more.”

A faraway look entered Ren’s eyes. “Maybe you’re right. Like chasing something you can’t have. That’s a major theme in Ovid’s work, by the way. Wanting what you can’t have. Shouldn’t have. Having it destroy you.”

Hux shifted uncomfortably in his seat, sensing a double-entendre. He thought longingly of lighting another cigarette. “I’m not sure I catch what you mean.”

“Ovid,” Ren sighed a bit dreamily, settling further back into the car seat. “He’s chaotic. Confusing. Definitely self-contradictory. But he’s got a certain charm.”

Hux had always disliked Ovid, having been forced to read his _Metamorphoses_ in his youth, and despising it: the disorder, the lack of focus, the lack of point. Now, compared to the living hurricane that was Kylo Ren, it didn’t seem too bad. “I’ve warmed up to him.”

“I bet you just love Hemingway,” Ren continued, a bit nonsensically. “Or textbooks. Facts. Figures. Mechanisms.”

Hux contemplated this. “You’re still high.”

“Yep.”

They fell silent for a moment, neither of them moving or saying anything. Hux felt warm, relaxed, almost sleepy. A thought occurred to him; he checked his watch. “The game’s almost over.”

“Already?”

Hux shrugged. “Looks like. Do you want to catch the last few minutes?”

Ren nodded, pulling out a pack of gum and unwrapping two sticks and stuffing them into his mouth. He offered the pack to Hux. He declined. “Sure.”

Hux unlocked the doors and pushed his open, his breath clouding the frigid air like smoke. Ren laughed quietly, delighted at the sight. Hux rolled his eyes. Hadn’t the idiot seen condensation before?

Hux’s foot hit a patch of ice and he slipped, his stomach dropping like a stone—  
  
Ren grabbed his arm and pulled him upright. “Woah there,” he muttered, his large hand finding Hux’s own. It was large and warm and rough, unlike Hux’s perpetually clammy hands. “Careful.”

“I can walk perfectly well on my own, thanks,” Hux snapped, but made no effort to dislodge his hand from Ren’s. He _was_ rather warm, after all, radiating heat like a glowing ember, and his heavy Doc Martens were much more suited to walking over ice than Hux’s flat-bottomed dress shoes. Together they made it to the gym without further incident, stopping before the door.

“Thanks for letting me sit in your car,” Ren said, a bit pointlessly. He bit at his lower lip, fidgeting with his fingers.

Hux kissed him. Lightly, on the lips. Ren replied with another soft kiss, slower this time, his warm hands ghosting to the back of Hux’s neck, brushing away snowflakes, his warm breath fluttering against Hux’s cheeks. After a few moments they drifted apart; a soft halo framed Ren’s face from the melted snowflakes latched to his lashes.

Hux blinked, the haze from the car’s heater immediately gone. He pulled away, pushing his lukewarm hands into his ice-covered coat pockets. “I—I forgot my bag in the car,” he mumbled, stepping towards the curb.

Ren handed it to him, looking relieved. Hux had forgotten he’d carried it the entire time. “I’ll see you inside,” he said quickly, then pushed open the door and hurried inside, his dark, slouching frame momentarily silhouetted by the light from the gym. The door snapped shut behind him, cutting off the roar of the crowd.

Hux fumbled for his keys in his pocket and hurried back to his car, blinking away the watering of his eyes—from the cold, no doubt. He wrenched the door open and dropped back into the driver’s seat, breathing hard. The car was still warm. He sat for a moment, waiting for the feeling panic to abate, to summon the control to drive home.

He hadn’t had a moment that intimate in years, not since an ill-advised fling in undergrad. He and Ren had hardly touched each other, but it was the _closeness_ that terrified him—allowing himself to be close to another being, their whole lives and his, for that moment, entirely exposed. Vulnerable.

He wanted that closeness. Craved it, even, sometimes. But not with all and sundry—and definitely not the messy chaos that was Kylo Ren. Ren had, in just a week, become his friend, but Hux couldn’t allow it to be more. And it had to be gradual, slow, like dipping one toe into a cold pool in the summer, lowering himself inch by inch—

Hux shook the thoughts away and focused at the task at hand. It was almost seven; he wanted to be home by eight to finish his tasks for the day. He turned the ignition and started home.

 

* * *

 

 

“That,” Phasma said with a satisfied sigh as she backed out of the parking lot, “was the best fourth quarter of my career.”

“That was one hell of a comeback,” Kylo agreed, fighting the guilt from his voice. When he’d returned to the gym, Phasma’s team had been winning, but he’d gleaned as much from the crowd’s energy. That was about all he’d gotten, though. Apart from a series of shots from Phasma that even he could recognize as stunning, he’d missed just about everything.

“Right?” Phasma said excitedly. “At this rate, we might make Nationals. _Nationals,_ Ren. First of our teams in _years_ to do that. That would be fucking _legit._ ”

“You did a great job,” Kylo told her, truthfully. Even from what he’d seen, he knew as much. “You’re a great captain. A great _leader._ You were great out there.”

Phasma smiled at him in the mirror, her bright blue eyes sparkling with the lights of the road. “Thanks, Ren.” Her smile grew devious. “So how was it with Hux?”

A quick spike of terror shot through his gut. _How did she—_ “What do you mean?”

“I know he sat in your spot. I assume you two didn’t just sit there like asses and say nothing to each other, did you?”

Kylo said nothing, feeling a bit carsick. She didn’t know. No one knew. Except Hux, and himself. That was already too many. “Pretty much.”

Phasma rolled her eyes dramatically, still electrified by the victory. “ _Ren,_ ” she groaned. “What the hell do I have to do to get you two dipshits together? You’re practically _made_ for each other.”

Kylo gave an involuntary snort. “Made for each other? Have you actually _met_ either of us?”

Phasma took a hand off the wheel long enough to punch him in the arm. He yelped, clutching his shoulder. She gave an apologetic grimace. “Shit, sorry—but don’t get smart with me, Ren. I know you both well enough to know you’re both idiots, and blind to boot. You’d be good together.”

“We really _wouldn’t,_ ” he snapped, with far more venom than he’d intended. “He’s a controlling bastard who has to have _every_ fucking little thing done his way or he’ll throw a gasket, and he’s probably emotionally repressed himself into another dimension. No one’s good enough for him, because he’s going to be a _Success,_ and damn anyone or anything that gets in his way.”

Phasma was silent for a moment, and Kylo immediately regretted his outburst. Hux was her friend, damn it, and he’d definitely gone a step too far.

“Sorry,” he muttered, fiddling with the case on his phone.

“Well, you’re not wrong,” Phasma said at last. “He’s got his own messes. Just like you. He just happens to hide them better. But they’re there.”

“No, it’s my fault,” Kylo muttered. “Me and my stupid emotional fucking baggage. Fear of commitment, being tied down. Loosing independence.” _Just like Han,_ he thought bitterly. He slapped his phone onto the dashboard, hard, not caring whether the screen would crack. “I’m still running, Phas. I’ve been running since I left home when I was sixteen and stupid. What if I’m not able to stop?”

Phasma was quiet for a moment, absorbing what he’d said. She was always good about that, mulling his words over before responding. Then, “You don’t have to stop, you know,” she said. “That is, you don’t have to settle down and do the home, nuclear family, 2.5 kids thing. You can find someone to run with you, or not at all. There’s no one ‘right’ way to live your life. But I think it’ll be better for you if you...stop running _away_ from things.”

The Toyota took a hard turn and Kylo was surprised to see Han and Leia’s driveway stretching in the headlights’ beam. With a sick feeling in his stomach, he started grabbing his things and shoving them into his pockets.

“ _Ren_ ,” Phasma said, her voice tinged with intermingled worry and frustration. “Did you hear me? You don’t have to go right away—”

“Yeah,” Kylo interrupted. “Thanks.” He kicked the door open, trying to banish the taste of Hux’s lips on his own. “See you next Wednesday.”

“Text me,” Phasma called after him. “Kylo, promise—”

He ran to the door and slammed it shut behind him.

“Absolutely not,” Leia’s voice said from the kitchen, loud, and angry.. “Han, when we moved here we said we’d put a stop to this stuff. Not at home, and not near home. Remember?”

“C’mon,” Han wheedled, trying for his best Solo grin. “It’s just a few rounds of poker with Chewie and the boys. What could possibly go wrong?”

Kylo winced on Han’s behalf.

“Oh, I don’t know, how about _everything?”_ Leia replied sharply, arms crossed over her chest. “I won’t have it. This is a _home,_ not some dive bar in Cuba.”

Han put on his most wounded expression. “What’re you saying about Chewie?”

Leia stomped her foot. “I’m not—you _know_ I don’t have a problem with Chewie, he’s been with us forever. I’m talking about the others, Han. You know the ones. How much money do you owe them, again? Five thousand? Ten?”

Han leveled an accusing finger at her. “I don’t owe Kanjiclub a cent.” His frown deepened, became smug. “ _I_ know what this is about.”

Leia raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Oh? Enlighten me, flyboy.”

“This is about your _career,”_ Han said, emphasizing _career_ as if it were some great evil. “ ‘What will the neighbors think’ and all that bullshit. Go on. Admit it. Ruffians like me aren’t good enough company for her holiness, the _visionary Senator_ Organa, Isn’t that right?”

“This isn’t about—it’s not the neighbors, it’s the entire—you are so full of _shit,_ ” Leia snapped, putting her hands on her hips. “Would I have married you if that’s what I thought? Huh? Would I? Or am I cramping your little James Dean _aesthetic_ , Han?”

“Aesthetic?” Han snapped back. “I’m not an _aesthetic—“_

“Tell that to your precious restricted firearm license I’ve been getting shit about for the past four months!” Leia shouted.

Han fired up immediately. “Oh I’m _sorry,_ your highness—“

Kylo stole silently towards the stairs.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Leia shouted, turning on him irately. Kylo swore to himself—it was as if she had a sixth sense for these things. “It’s dinner time.”

“I’m not hungry,” Kylo muttered, silently debating whether to risk the wrath of Leia to leg it and lock the door to his room. The fights were nothing new: they’d been doing it as long as he could remember. He’d long since found the best way to weather them was to seclude himself and wait it out. Preferably with headphones.

“You heard your mother,” Han said. “It’s dinner. We’re a family. Come eat.”

“I’m twenty-three. I’ll eat when I damn well please.” Kylo started up the stairs. He’d start his Biometry report, he’d do his reading, anything to get away.

“Dinner. _Now._ ” Leia told him, fixing him with a glare that had frozen powerful senators’ blood in their veins.

Kylo threw down his phone and keys on the nearest surface and stomped into the kitchen, hands and jaw clenched. He hated this house, he hated it’s stupid little kitchen and tidy dinner table and gingham tablecloth and idyllic backyard and hard, new couches and decorated mantle. More than that, he hated being a _son_ again, that eternal bargaining chip and monkey in the middle, powerless and subject to his parents’ every whim.

“Take off your shoes in the kitchen,” Han scolded, and Kylo very nearly lost his temper. Mustering his self-control, he ripped his laces loose and kicked off his Docs, throwing them in a heap by the door with two loud _CLUNKs._ Leia gave him a reproving glance, then sat down at the table.

Kylo grabbed a plate of spaghetti and began shoveling it into his mouth as fast as he could, keeping his eyes glued to the stupid red and white tablecloth.

“Eat properly,” Leia told him sharply. “And keep your elbows off the table. You aren’t a wild animal.”

Kylo rolled his eyes as exaggeratedly as possible, but grudgingly complied, slowing to a more acceptable pace and straightening his posture. He felt like kicking something, and hard.

“Thank you,” Han said, and Kylo almost rolled his eyes again. He hated when they pretended to do that parental tag-team thing, as if Han Solo and Leia Organa had ever agreed on anything in their lives, let alone something to do with their son.

“We were thinking of inviting Uncle Luke and your cousin for dinner some time,” Leia said with forced nonchalance.

Kylo didn’t look up from his plate. “I thought they were in Mexico.”

“They are, yes. But after....Mara, your Uncle has been talking about coming home. We thought it would be nice to welcome him and Rey back.”

Kylo snorted. “So much for their do-good mission. That lasted real long.”

Leia shot him another glare. “Don’t shit-talk your uncle. Not after what’s happened.”

Kylo rolled his eyes, tearing his gaze from his plate with will. “So she’s dead. I don’t see what that has to do with us. Luke was more than happy to abandon us when he decided he wanted to ‘make a difference’ in those _poor, unfortunate_ people’s lives. I don’t see why we should be doing him any favors.”

Leia and Han exchanged looks. This very thing had been a point of contention in the past. And Kylo knew it. “Our past with Uncle Luke aside...we owe it to Rey, don’t you think? She’s just lost her mother. She could use some support.”

Kylo nearly choked on his spaghetti. “ _Support_? Where the hell was my _support_? Where was my _support_ when you were swanning all over the godforsaken tundra and _he—“_ he jerked a thumb at Han—“was fucking around all over Cuba?”

“Don’t talk to your mother like that,” Han growled, gripping the table’s edge and leaning forward.

Kylo managed to laugh. It took on a somewhat manic edge. “I don’t believe you guys. You care more about perfect, wonderful, _sweet_ little Rey more than your own son. Well, I’m not fucking stupid. I know you’ve always wanted the little girl I wasn’t more than me. Unpredictable, unbalanced, ungrateful little fucker, aren’t I?”

Leia flushed, her mouth drawing into a thin line. Her grip on her untensils tightened to a breaking point. “Stop. Stop right now.”

“Why don’t you _make_ me?” Kylo snapped. “Why don’t you just be fucking _honest_ for once and say it. You don’t want me. You never wanted me. You’ve probably been cursing that defective condom since before I was born— _if_ you even bothered to use one. Go ahead and invite Rey. I bet Luke would be happy to dump her on you, given how little attention he gave her when she was a kid—it took him how long to acknowledge she was even _his_ —?“

“ _Son,_ ” Han began in threatening tones. “Don’t talk like that under this roof. You hear me?”

“Do I hear you?” Kylo repeated, a bit shrilly. “Do _I_ hear you? Yes, I do. I’ve heard you, every night, when I couldn’t sleep. Always arguing, _shouting,_ screaming—do you know how fucking _scary_ that is when you’re twelve years old? Knowing that your world could get torn apart any second? Staring down two homes, two parents, being tossed around like an unwanted sack of potatoes—”

Leia sighed, somewhere between angry and upset. “How were we—you never _told_ us—“

Kylo slammed a fist down on the table, making the tableware jump and clatter. “I never told you? I ran away—I tried to off myself—what more could I have done to _tell_ you? Shoot up a school? Come at you with a giant flaming sword? Seriously, I’m at a loss here, how many more red flags did I have to wave before you finally fucking noticed?”

Leia bit her lip, eyes blazing, breathing hard through her nose. She was standing, now—they all were, he noticed, most of all himself. He was taller than Han now, and he dwarfed Leia almost comically. He still felt about five feet tall. He’d been around Hux and Phasma so much lately that he’d forgotten his own height.

“I’m leaving,” he muttered, pushing back his chair and heading for the stairs before anyone could argue. He felt dizzy, light-headed, as if he were still high from the parking lot with Hux. Maybe this was all part of a really bad acid trip. Not that he’d ever done acid. He vaguely hoped it was.

“Kylo,” Leia’s voice said from outside as he stuffed clothes and books into his backpack, half gently, half commanding. “Open the door.”

Kylo said nothing and kept packing. He felt the hard edge of vindictive self-pity that only stupid, self-harming maneuvers like this could bring. It was a feeling he was familiar with.

“Son,” Han began. Kylo grit his teeth and kept stuffing his books into his overflowing backpack. He didn’t own much: with a few exceptions, he managed to fit everything into the bag. Just as it should be. Ready to leave, ready for anything. Unattached.

Free.

“Step back,” he said, then unlocked and shouldered through the door. He kept his eyes fixed on the stairwell, refusing to look at his parents’ faces. To look at them at all. He took the stairs at a run, cramming his hands in the pockets of his jacket, bracing himself for the cold.

When he opened the door, the cold was instantaneous. Wind buffeted him with merciless fury, the snow blinding. Gritting his teeth, Kylo stepped out into the unshoveled snow, already inches thick. He began to walk with powerful strides, down the driveway, down the street, out of the neighborhood. He could barely see through the flurry of snow and the howling wind; he had no idea where he was going, or where he even was. It was past eleven; there were no hostels within anything even resembling walking distance open that he could think of, and he didn’t have the money for a hotel. The friends he usually crashed with were gone on some half-witted road trip across the US in a probably stolen RV, and he didn’t have keys to their place. Within minutes, his hands and face were numb, the tips of his ears throbbing painfully. He realized he had put on nothing more than a thin jacket with no hat, gloves, or scarf—there was a very real possibility he might freeze.

With clumsy hands, Kylo pulled out his phone, dialing Phasma. He halted over the call button. She’d already dealt with plenty of his shit tonight—tonight, the night she should be celebrating with her team, not dealing with her jackass, dysfunctional liability of a friend.

He ended the call, then began to cry.

It had been a while since he’d actually cried, and he felt stupid doing it. He felt stupid feeling stupid. He felt stupid trudging through knee-high snowbanks and he felt stupid stumbling along the edge of the road like a drunkard, all of which only made him cry harder. He was alone, it was dark, no one cared. He cried until his stomach hurt from hiccupping and his tears and snot were icy cold on his face. His jacket was soaked through with melted snow; he was shivering violently, teeth chattering, limbs numb and stiff with cold.

He was climbing through a large drift of snow that had been cleared into a pile when something gave and he slipped, his knee twisting at an impossible angle. He collapsed with a cry. His knee ached; he was lying in a bank of snow, he could barely feel his own feet.

 _This is where I’m going to die,_ came a stray panicked thought. He fumbled for a minute with his phone, then dialed the Queer Campus hotline number. It hadn’t been set up yet, he knew, but it was all he could think of, his last hope on a very short list of contacts.

The line rang, and rang, and rang. Just as Kylo was going to give up and end the call, a the line picked up.

“ _Hello_?”

“Tell Phasma I’m sorry,” Kylo blurted out. “Tell her I’m sorry for being an ass, I’m sorry for not actually going to her games, I’m sorry for doubting her group...thing. She’s perfect, she deserves better. Oh and tell Hux I’m sorry too—“

“ _Ren?”_ the voice exclaimed, then became panicked. “ _Ren—whatever you’re about to do, don’t do it. Talk to me. Tell me where you are. What’s around you.”_

“There’s...snow,” Kylo said. “And a lamp post. It’s fucking bright, actually. Too bright.”

“ _A lamppost—? Ren, are you outside in a snowstorm?”_

Kylo paused. “Maybe.”

An angry huff came over the line. “ _What kind of colossally stupid—only you, you big fucking idiot—I fucking swear—“_

Kylo frowned. “Hux, is that you?”

_“You’re damn well right it is. Why the hell are you out in a snowstorm in the dead of winter? And how did you know I have this number? I haven’t even set it up yet—”_

“I didn’t,” Kylo said defensively, attempting to pull himself upright and failing. “I got lost—I wasn’t paying attention—“

“ _Where the hell are you?”_ Hux demanded, cutting him off. “ _It’s cold as hell out there—what the hell happened—?”_

“I’m not sure,” Kylo said. “Where I am. I kind of wandered. And now I’m here.”

A pause, and what could have either been a sigh or a whispered _for fuck’s sake._ Then, “Tell me what you see around you.”

“The lamppost,” Kylo said quickly. “A parking lot. A bit store, green sign—I can’t read it from here—another red sign beside that. There’s an intersection a few yards back, a major highway or something—god it’s cold—“

“ _You’re at the grocery store by 111th. How did you even get up there? Never mind, I don’t want to know. I’m coming to get you, don’t move, and don’t hang up.”_ A jangle of keys, a slammed door, a low rumble of an engine.

Without further ado, the line went dead. Kylo pressed the power button; it flashed a _no battery_ screen and went blank. He threw the phone further down the bank, his crying transformed into a bitter sort of laughter, then lay back and watched the snow float down from the inky sky.

 

* * *

 

 

Hux pulled up at the edge of the parking lot, utterly unable to believe his eyes.

Kylo Ren lay in a snowbank, backpack by his side, half-covered in snow, dark hair plastered to his face, his backpack clutched in one gloveless hand. How he hadn’t solidified into an oversized human icicle, Hux couldn’t be certain. Hux pushed the car door open and rushed to his side. Ren’s eyes were shut, his face oddly still. “Ren!”

Ren’s dark eyes opened. “Hux,” he said, ghastly pale. “Shit—how did I—fuck—“

“Shut up and get into the car,” Hux said, looping an arm around his broad shoulders and half helping, half carrying him to the passenger’s seat. He was icy cold—Hux couldn’t imagine how long he’d been outside, in nothing but jeans and a thin jacket. His lips were a pale blue; upon entering the heated car his skin immediately flushed red.

Hux reached across him and dialed down the heat to low, then shut the door and hurried to the driver’s side. Ren reached for the heat but Hux swatted his hand away. “It’ll make it worse, believe me,” he said. “You’ll have to heat up gradually.”

“But I’m cold,” Ren whined, petulant.

“And you deserve it,” Hux told him sharply. “Honestly, Ren, I’ve never had this much trouble from the cat. Maybe I should get you microchipped, too.”

He frowned. “You have a cat?”

“Her name’s Millicent,” Hux told him, backing out the parking lot and debating whether or not to call Phasma. And tell her what? Hello, it’s me, I found Kylo Ren in a snowbank half frozen to death, quite possibly because I acted shit about kissing him, please advise.

“Millicent,” Ren repeated drowsily, already half-asleep. “That’s nice.”

Once he’d pulled into the parking space outside his apartment, Hux half-dragged, half-carried Ren from the car to his couch, depositing him on a cushion returning with the few blankets in the apartment, which he proceeded to arrange around him, muttering under his breath all the while. “You are, without a doubt, the most ridiculous person I know.”

“I know,” Ren mumbled, curling up under the blankets and shuddering with cold. “Hux?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for coming to get me.”

Hux sighed. “You’re welcome.” With a last look at Ren’s dark hair nestled amongst his couch cushions, he left to go make a cup of tea. By the time he’d returned, Ren was fast asleep. Claiming the mug for himself, Hux sat down on the couch next to him and let the heat from the mug seep back into his hands.

 

* * *

 

 

Kylo awoke to the smell of coffee and fingers in his hair. He blinked and squirmed, feeling feverish. Then he remembered. Loosing his temper. Leaving Han and Leia’s. The cold. Collapsing in a snowbank. Calling Hux.

He groaned, long and heartfelt. If the void had opened and swallowed him right there, he would have been grateful.

“Good morning to you, too,” Hux returned crisply.

“Fuck,” Kylo said, then frowned at the book sitting open on the glass coffee table before him. “Were you...reading to me?”

“You were getting fretful. So I read my torts cases to you. Sent you right off,” Hux told him cheerfully. “Can’t say I blame you. They’re bloody awful, not to mention boring. I’d fall asleep too, if I could.”

“Where am I?” He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, shifting about. He was still wearing his boots, sans only his jacket. He looked around the room, noting the harsh, Spartan decour, ruthlessly clean. He couldn’t imagine anyone—save maybe a serial killer—living there.

“My apartment,” Hux told him. “You do remember what happened, correct?”

“Yeah,” Kylo muttered, feeling his face heat. “Sorry about that.”

Hux chuckled. “In retrospect, it makes a good story. So what _were_ you doing out there? Other than re-enacting _The Revenant._ ”

Kylo bit at his lip. Hux’s hair was messy, tousled in an artfully disarranged state he could only dream to achieve. A soft brown cardigan hung from his thin shoulders, a mint-colored t-shirt under it. He wore well-fitting beige slacks and knobby socks. “I....uh, I had an argument. With my parents. I’m, uh, not living with them anymore.”

Hux nodded, frowning in genuine sympathy. “I understand.”

Kylo nodded in return, grateful he was not asking him to elaborate. Phasma’s tact must be rubbing off on him, her intuitive ability to sense where to push and where to wait for him to offer it himself.“Are those your books?”

“Just a portion,” Hux replied. “The rest are still at my parents’ house, these are just my favorites. They weren’t particularly thrilled about shipping crates of them across the Atlantic, but I didn’t give a damn.”

Kylo admired their spines, the rich colors, the wonderful and varied titles. He wanted to sink his teeth into them, consume them all, read and devour every single one. “You’ve got lovely taste.”

Hux gave him a wry smile. “Thank you, Ren. That means so much coming from Marilyn Manson’s number one fan."

“Fuck you,” Kylo laughed. A thought occurred to him, colliding suddenly with the levity of the moment. “Oh, fuck, you haven’t told Phasma, have you?”

She was probably worried. And angry. As soon as she knew he was alright, he was in for the lecture of a lifetime. She was good at those. He knew, because he often did things to deserve them.

“She called me around midnight asking if you’d called. I told her that you were here and safe. I figured you’d want to speak to her yourself.” Hux gestured to Kylo’s phone, lying on the coffee table. “I hope you don’t mind I charged it for you.”

Kylo marveled a bit hopelessly at his efficiency. It was a good day when he remembered to grab his phone at all. “Uh, thanks. I’ll text her later.” Let her enjoy whatever was left of her morning, he thought. He couldn’t imagine chewing him out was all that fun.

“Listen, Ren,” Hux started, leaning forwards, then stalled, clearly at a loss for words. Kylo couldn’t imagine that happened often. “Your...escapade didn’t have anything to do with...with what happened at the game, did it?”

“What? No, nothing like that,” Kylo said. Hux didn’t look convinced. Kylo pressed on, gesturing vaguely at nothing in particular, trying to hold eye contact. “It’s my fault if anything, I’m the one who...ran away. Also my fault for calling you in a snowstorm,” he added lamely.

“That wasn’t your fault,” Hux told him, a bit grudgingly. “The snowstorm, yes. But the game...that was my...look, Ren, I like you. Quite a bit more than I like most people, if I’m being honest. I’m just...not used to it. Do you understand?”

Kylo stared at him for a few moments, thunderstruck. “You mean....you don’t hate me?”

Hux frowned. It made little crinkles appear at the corners of his eyes. “Ren, did you hear a word I just said?”

“I thought you hated me,” Kylo said. “What with the...baggage...and mess, and the general shitshow. You’re uh, not a very messy person,” he added, surveying the pristine apartment. He very well could have stepped into an issue of _High End Living—_ it was the same glossy feel, along with the nagging sense that no one actually lived there.

Hux’s mouth curled upwards into a rueful smile. Kylo could not help but notice that his lips were full and curved, an inviting shade of pink that was almost a red. “I’m very good at putting out fires, Ren. If anyone’s equipped to deal with you other than Phasma, it would be me.”

“That’s not exactly a declaration of neverending love,” Kylo muttered, fretting with the delicately fringed edge of Hux’s blanket.

“Oh, and you can do better?” Hux propped his socked feet up on the glass coffee table, arms crossed over his thin chest.

Ren sighed. “No. Probably not.” He unfolded his legs and pulled off his boots, one by one. His shoelaces were still soaked, the thick leather of the shoe itself heavier than usual, still waterlogged. He tossed them aside, then, after receiving a glare from Hux, set them aside on their sides, to keep more mud from getting on the floor.

The doorbell rang, a short, pleasant chime. Kylo looked to Hux. Hux looked to the door, then Kylo. His pale eyes widened expressively. “Oh _fuck_ ,” he said.

Kylo opened his mouth to question—

“You’ve got to hide,” Hux hissed, grabbing his arm and wrenching him to his feet. For such a thin man, he had a grip vicelike steel. “ _Quickly._ We haven’t much time.” He tugged Kylo headlong into the empty hall, then opened a closet door and pushed him towards it.

“No way,” Kylo protested loudly. “I’ve spent half my fucking life in a closet, I’m not _hiding_ in one like a misbehaved pet—“

Hux grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him harshly. He had a deathly serious look. “Ren,” he hissed through gritted teeth, “would you rather meet my mother?"

Kylo felt his eyes widen to almost comic proportions, the blanket around his shoulders nearly slipping off. He lurched for the cramped space. “The closet sounds good.”

Hux crammed him in and slammed the door shut just as the doorbell rang again, twice this time. He swore with great invention. “I forgot they were coming—she said they’d come next month— _fuck_ —“

“How do I know I can come out?” Kylo called, but there was no reply. Hurried footsteps and then—

“ _Honey_! There you are!”

Kylo shuddered, despite himself. The exclamation was a sugared and loud as it was fake—he could tell that even from a linen closet. He couldn’t fathom the person who’d given birth to Hux was nearly as vapid as the voice sounded: he could easily imagine it belied a shrewd, cunning mind, constantly plotting, scheming. Hux’s mother sounded exactly like the kind of person Kylo—and Han and Leia, for that matter—disliked intensely. He felt a great swell of pity for Hux that almost eclipsed being stuffed in a closet.

“Mother. Father,” was Hux’s robotic reply. His tone wasn’t the same as the exasperated one he used when he said, _“Ren.”_ It sounded guarded. Carefullyy blank. Kylo strained to hear what came next, a low rumble that he could only assume was his father.

“We thought we’d surprise you, honey,” his mother said. “Our plane got _horribly_ delayed—honestly, the state of the help these days—but of course you understand. Let’s put all that nastiness behind us, shall we?“

Kylo did a mental double-take. Had she just seriously referred to people as ‘the help’? Had she just marathoned Downton Abbey—one of Han and Chewie’s favorites, to Leia’s great dismay—or...

A horrible thought occurred to him. Hux was pretty wealthy, he knew that already. It didn’t take a genius to guess, given the clothes, the upscale apartment, the car. But....was he _rich_? Like, ‘enemy of the people’ rich? He was from the UK. Was he nobility? Kylo suddenly regretted not asking. He suddenly felt very faint. How would that conversation even go? Hey, Hux, just wondering, you don’t happen to be a duke or anything? Live in a mansion? Nothing like that? Okay good. Ah, just wondering.

He couldn’t possibly imagine explaining that one to Han and Leia. They’d be so disappointed. Maybe they’d finally cut off contact once and for all, just by having a ‘rich overlord’ for a boyfriend. Rey, he thought bitterly, would certainly never do such a thing.

“There’s no room in my apartment,” Hux’s voice said, barely audible from Kylo’s vantage. “You’ll have to get a hotel.”

“Oh, honey, don’t be silly, we were planning to get away for a week. This city’s so dreadful—we were thinking Milan, somewhere in the sun. We thought we’d pick you up from this dreary little place and take you with us somewhere nice. How does that sound?”

“What?” Hux demanded. “Are you kidding me? I can’t just take off a week—I’ve got school, work, volunteering—they’re called responsibilities, you may have heard of them—?”

“Don’t take that tone with us, young man,” Hux’s father said, voice low and growly. Kylo thought he recognized Hux’s phantom accent in his speech, more pronounced, but still couldn’t place it.  
  
”You shouldn’t be here,” Hux seethed. “You didn’t give me warning, didn’t ask—you may think this is your fucking backyard, but it’s not. I’ve got a life of my own to run, and believe it or not, it doesn’t center around you.”

There was a long silence, heavy with portent, and even Kylo could tell Hux had overstepped. When Hux’s father spoke, Kylo couldn’t help but cringe. “Language, son.”

Hux exploded. Like that time at the bake sale with Poe, but much, much worse, spitting-mad with fury. He yelled, his father shouted, his mother cried. Kylo retreated further into the closet, feeling awful—he couldn’t make out what they were saying anymore, despite the loudness of the argument, but he didn’t have to to get the gist. _Leave me alone._ The memory of his argument with his own parents surfaced, already gone soft; it felt it had happened years ago, not just last night. He wished he could move enough to stuff his fingers in his ears. In the end, he managed to wriggle around enough to do so.

After what felt like hours, the front door slammed shut and silence rang through the apartment, quiet as a cemetery. With trepidation, he opened the door and stepped out, gratefully breathing in the fresher air.

“Ren, I—“ Hux broke off, looking stricken. His hair had fallen from an artfully disarranged state to something more akin to chaos, his face still flushed from residual emotion, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Kylo noticed the soft down of translucent hair on his skin, lit by the floor-to-ceiling window behind him. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Kylo said, and he was. He felt wretched. “Are they...should I leave?”

Hux gave a bitter laugh. “They’re kicking me out, for now anyways. I’m not entirely sure where to go. I don’t want to call Phasma. We’ve abused her good nature too much lately, as it is.” He ran a hand through his hair, heaved a heavy sigh. “Well, I can’t say this has happened to me before. It’s...it’s all rather sudden. It’s been coming for a while.”

Kylo nodded, unsure of what else to do. He trod carefully over to the couch and picked up his shoes, phone, and backpack. “Are...you okay?”

Hux didn’t answer, looking around the sleek, stylish apartment as if it weren’t really there. “I can’t say I’ll miss it, to be honest with you. A bit too noveaux riche, wouldn’t you say?”

Kylo couldn’t quite fathom what noveaux riche was supposed to mean, but he doubted it really mattered. “Come on,” he said, gently as he could. “Let’s go. Get your shoes. You can come back for your things later. Trust me, I know how it goes.”

Hux gave him a vague smile. “Thank you, Ren.”

 

 

 

Kylo dropped into the McDonald’s booth, noting the frayed linoleum and picking at it idly. Hux looked so out of place here, it’s faux-cheery reds and yellows clashing terribly with his soft hair and clothes. He looked washed-out, deathly pale in the harsh, industrial light.

But he was there. Sitting across from him. Kylo withheld the urge to reach out to see if he was real. He had a sneaking suspicion he’d been hit by a car and this was all some weird, drug-induced dream. Or he’d passed out in the snow and died what was quite possibly the dumbest death in history.

“What did you do when you first left?” Hux asked suddenly, breaking Kylo out of his reverie. “When you were younger.”

“You mean when I ran away?” Kylo said. Hux nodded. He frowned into his coffee, trying to recall. “I came here. Not this McDonalds, another one, I don’t recall which one. I bought myself an ice cream, because I could. I ate it all, then went to the bathroom—it was fucking filthy, by the way—and vomited it all back up into the sink.”

His phone buzzed in his pocket and the memory fragmented, falling back to pieces and receding into the past. He checked; it was Leia. She and Han had been texting him all night. There were a few texts from Phasma, as well.

Hux gave a rueful smile. “Mine have already texted, too. I’m ignoring it.”

Kylo held out a hand. “Lemme see.”

Hux made an affronted face. “Absolutely not.”

“I’ll give you mine,” Kylo wheedled, pushing his phone towards him on the worn, greasy tabletop. Hux stared at it, conflicted. Finally he broke, pulling his phone out of his cardigan pocket—a spotless iPhone, the latest model, whatever it was, sleek and stylish, utterly unpersonalized—and handed it over.

“Don’t say a word or I’ll scalp you,” he threatened and Kylo nodded, making a crossing gesture over his heart in mock solemnity.

He opened the newest message and skimmed through the chunks and chunks of text. Veiled threats, unveiled threats, pleas, anger. From each text bled a simmering resentment, disapproval wielded like a razor blade, cutting at the softest, most vulnerable parts. It made Kylo furious, as well as sad, and he bit down on his lip hard. He had half a mind to reply, Hux’s wrath be damned, and tell them where the hell they could stuff their manipulative head-games bullshit.

He looked up to see Hux typing away, flicking them away to be sent as fast as he was typing. “Hey!” Kylo exclaimed, swiping at his phone. “You asshole, give that _back—“_

“Your mother’s a rather good debater,” Hux said idly, evading with ease, never taking his eyes from Kylo’s screen. “Your father, not so much. He keeps repeating ‘eat shit’ and telling me not to use words he has to google.”

“I’d better hope she’d be,” Kylo snapped. “She’s a fucking Senator, for crying out loud—give that _back,_ will you? Leia’s going to fucking _kill_ me if you don’t stop aggravating her—“

Hux froze mid-text, his eyes going comically wide. “Leia—Leia _Organa_?” Kylo had never seen him babble, but this was the closest he thought he’d ever get. “ _She’s_ your mother? Fuck—I take that back, she’s a hero and deserves respect—I just called _Leia Organa_ a domineering shrew, god take me now—“

Kylo wrestled his phone away from him. “Don’t go _telling_ her that,” he groaned. “It’s bad enough as it is that everyone I know practically worships her.”

“Ren, she’s one of the most competent, results-oriented politicians in the country,” Hux said. “Her proposed policies are light-years ahead of everyone else—she’s a revolutionary—I’ve written _papers_ on her—“

“I _know,_ ” Kylo bit out. “She’s the best thing since sliced lawyers—no offence. I should look up to her. I do, in a way. But that’s the thing. She’s a politician, and a great one. She was just never my mother first.”

Hux’s expression softened, and Kylo’s ire abated, just a little. Then, “Can I just take back the dominating shrew bit?”

Kylo scowled. “No. Here’s your fucking phone.” He shoved Hux’s iPhone back at him, then shutting off notifications and returning his phone to his jeans’ pocket.

Hux gave him bemused look, glancing up from his phone. “Ren, did you spam my father with the Lenny face?”

“It’s le Lenny face,” Kylo corrected idly. “But yeah, I did. It’s the best response to that bullshit I could think of. Besides, it’ll confuse the hell out of him. Memes always do. And I sent a few to your mother, too.”

Hux frowned, then laughed. “Well, it certainly did shut them up.”

“That was the general idea.”

Hux was quiet for a moment, staring into his coffee. The reality of it was hitting him in waves, Kylo guessed. “You know, I’ve never been to McDonalds before,” he said at last.

Kylo laughed. “They know me here. I got a free Egg McMuffin once. At McDonalds, that’s practically a marriage proposal.”

Hux huffed. “It’s a fucking dump.”

Kylo shrugged. “It’s cheap.” A pause, then, “Will they take you back, do you think?”

Hux shrugged with feigned nonchalance. “I’ll find out, I guess. If they do, it’ll be shit-eating humble pie for me. If not...well, I’m not sure.”

Kylo knew that limbo well. The constant uncertainty, a paradox to itself. Like staring into the void, the endless realm of possibility, as dark and wild as it was wide and deep. The fear of not knowing how your next meal or shelter was going to happen. “It’ll be okay,” he said, taking Hux’s cold hand in his own.

Hux, to his surprise, squeezed back. He offered Kylo a weak smile. “Thanks.”

“Any time,” Kylo said, and meant it.

“Look at us,” Hux said after a moment, with an ironic laugh. “We’re a mess. A big. Fucking. Mess. You nearly died in a snowstorm—“

“—I wasn’t going to _die—“_

 _“_ —and I’m gulping down McDonalds coffee like it’s whiskey, I’m technically homeless, and my hair’s a mess,” Hux finished, as if he hadn’t heard him. “Honestly, what the hell was Phasma thinking. We’re terrible for each other. The solar system won’t last a minute.”

Kylo rolled his eyes. “As long as it’s not your _hair._ ”

Hux’s eyes narrowed. “I, unlike you, happen to take personal grooming seriously.”

“Fuck. You,” Kylo snarled. “I take my hair _perfectly_ seriously, thank you. I just don’t use half a bottle of product on it, unlike _you._ Some of us actually like to have a _natural,_ healthy look.”

Hux sneered at him, but offered no rejoinder. Kylo found it difficult to stay mad at him. Then they both began to laugh. Quietly at first, but then harder, until finally Hux’s head was in his hands and Kylo had rolled onto the bench, clutching at his sides in silent agony. It felt good to laugh, even if it also made him feel like crying. Besides, Hux looked ridiculous when he laughed. Ridiculous, but nice.

“We’re fucked,” Hux said.

“We should call Phasma,” Kylo agreed. “She can pick us up, and I can see if anyone can let us crash for a while. I know people, it’ll be fine. And you won’t have to suffer the indignity of McDonalds any longer than necessary.”

“Sounds good,” Hux replied, and Kylo suddenly realized how tired he looked. “But after we finish this coffee. I think...I could stand to stay here for a while more.” He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “With you, that is.”

Kylo smiled. Hux returned the smile, almost hesitantly. At the window beside them, the clouds shifted, exposing a weak ray of sun that traced the grey outlines of the clouds on the scratched, dirty tabletop between them.

 _As long as there’s light, there’s still hope._ Kylo lifted his coffee, tapped it against Hux’s in a sad, soggy cardboard toast. “To us,” he said, with a wry smile. “May Phasma save our souls.”

Hux returned the toast, bumping his burnt coffee against Kylo’s, sending a bit sloshing over the rim. “To us.”

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't finish the KBB. The KBB finished me.


End file.
